


The Lion and the Saint

by EinahSirro



Series: The Lion and the Bull [6]
Category: Troy (2004)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Fate & Destiny, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reincarnation, Religious Conflict, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Torture, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-12 14:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 30,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21478204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EinahSirro/pseuds/EinahSirro
Summary: Achilles is increasingly anxious to discover the patterns his Hector is living through. His Hector is increasingly anxious about the mysterious blond creature who... is saving him? Or trying to damn him?!
Relationships: Achilles/Hector (Greek and Roman Mythology), Achilles/Hector (Troy 2004)
Series: The Lion and the Bull [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1513298
Comments: 22
Kudos: 51





	1. Capture

Achilles looked drearily around the covered, rattling cart at the naked, chained slaves. Eight, counting himself. Was Hector here? No? Then it didn’t matter. He stared off into space, unmindful of the heat, and the sand that still clung to his skin. River, this time. Beautiful countryside. Not that it mattered to him.

“If we go to Hispalis, I bet we get put in the army,” said one of the captives, in a patois that was clearly based on Latin, but strangely corrupted. He had one eye that seemed not to be looking in the same direction as the other.

“Silence!!” A guard thumped a stick on the taut, sun-bleached canvas that stretched over their heads, blocking the midday sun.

“They aren’t supposed to do that anymore,” another fellow grumbled.

“Silence!” The guard thumped again.

“Be sure to tell them that when we get there,” said a third. He had a patchy beard.

“Silence!” The guard thumped three times this time, to show he was serious.

“And what do you mean, if we go to Hispalis. Where else would we be going?” Said the grumpy one, belatedly.

“Silence, damn you!!” _Thump, thump._

For a moment, there was silence.

“Or they might make us work on the aqueduct,” said the wall-eyed one, hopefully.

“Silence!! Silence now!!” _Thump, thump, thump._

“Pff, that’s a death sentence. Men get crushed by the rocks every day, you better hope you’re for the army.” Said a big fellow in the corner.

“Silence! Do not make me stop this cart!” _Thump, thump, thump._

“Oh, be silent yourself,” they heard the other guard finally say, “Give me that damn stick.”

The prisoners all regarded the shadows cast on the canvas for a moment, wondering. The cart slowed, and rocked, then rattled onward again. 

“The strong ones will go to the army, and the weak will go to the aqueduct,” predicted Wall-eye.

“Hey, how about some water?” The big fellow shouted toward the guards, whose silhouettes they could faintly see as the sun beat down on the canvas.

“I could piss in your mouth,” the guard shouted back.

“You have me confused with your mother,” the big fellow shouted in return.

The cart stopped.

“Now you’ve done it,” hissed the grumbler.

The canvas that fell over the back of the wagon lifted, and two sweaty guards, one large and one small, peered in. They were armed with spears, and wearing odd, long-sleeved garments under their tunics, which they’d then rolled up against the heat. Their legs were similarly covered with what looked like larger sleeves that emerged from under the tunic. Their feet were fully encased in leather boots.

“Who said that?” The smaller one demanded.

The big fellow pointed at Achilles, “He did.”

Achilles gave him a look, and then rolled his head to look at the guard, not particularly caring what happened.

The guard thrust the spear in and put the point of it to Achilles’ throat. “You want to say something now?”

Achilles brought his chained wrists up and took the spearhead in both hands, and then snapped the blade off. Staring at the guard, he dropped the spearhead on the wooden floor of the cart beside him.

The guard pulled what was left of his spear back and stared unbelievingly at the jagged end. The larger guard looked at it and peered in at Achilles, who stared blankly back at him.

“I don’t think he’s the type that talks much,” the guard opined. 

The smaller guard looked up at him. “This isn’t fucking funny, look what he did to my spear.”

“Yeah,” said the other guard laconically.

“You’ve always hated me,” the first guard griped.

“Yeah.” The other agreed, and then peered into the cart. “What do you want?”

“How about some water? It’s hot!” Said the big guy.

The little guard exploded with rage. “You think we don’t know it’s fucking hot? We’re the ones sitting up there in the fucking sun! At least you got the fucking canvas. You’re sitting here in the fucking shade!”

“You want to trade places?” Asked the big fellow.

“Shut the fuck up. We’ll be there in a while, and you can ask whoever buys you for some water.” The smaller fellow spat, and slapped down the canvas.

The cart rocked as the guard climbed back up into the seat. The canvas lifted again briefly as the larger guard threw in a leather bag of water. “That’s it, so make it last,” he said.

He eyed Achilles for a moment. 

“Nice trick,” he said.

Achilles made a modest gesture.

The guard looked at the wall-eyed fellow, who was gulping down water. “Pass it around now, don’t be an ass. Some of you might be together a long time. Don’t make enemies,” he advised. Then he withdrew.

“If I don’t get some of that water,” the big fellow warned, being furthest from the end and therefore last in line, “I will surely piss on your grave.”

“With what?” Said the grumbler, and a chuckle went around the cart.

The water was passed duly around, rather awkwardly as they were all in chains, but mankind does what it can with what it has. Achilles took a swig, but found he needed little, and handed it off to the next man.

“So how’d you do that,” asked the bearded man, glancing down at the discarded blade.

Achilles shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a spear.”

“You sound like an Italian,” the wall-eyed fellow said.

“Greek,” Achilles said listlessly.

“Really? Say something in Greek.” 

“I wish you would shut the fuck up,” Achilles said in Greek.

There was a snort of subdued laughter from the corner, and he leaned forward to see a skinny little fellow there who reminded him of Lucien, although it was not him. 

He let his head sink back against the cart with a thump.

When they finally arrived at their destination and exited the cart, they were clearly near the center of a thriving town. The buildings were of heavy, cut stone, and seemed to feature few windows. There were several trees whose trunks were so huge and convoluted, he stared at them as they were dragged from the cart. Achilles surmised that he was far from home.

The men were herded into what looked—and smelled—very much like stables. Achilles glanced around, and considered breaking loose immediately, but decided to let fate carry him along a bit more. His spirits were low, and Victor’s face was still before him. To have found such a willing, loving Hector and to have lost him so quickly… there was a pain in his chest right where Ovida’s knife had gone into his beloved. He wondered if that was how it had felt.

The larger guard lingered to give them some more advice. “Look lively. Look strong. The stronger you are, the more someone will pay, and the more they pay, the better they’re likely to treat you.”

He looked at Achilles, “You’ll end up in a good position, as long as you don’t act like you’re going to be a problem. I wouldn’t snap any spears in front of them until the time is right,” he grinned.

Achilles gave him a cordial nod. He supposed water and good advice was all the decency a slave-trader’s guard could afford.

“Good crowd today,” Said a heavy-set man, strolling into the holding area. He was dressed like the guards, with the fitted sleeves for arms and legs beneath his tunic, and he held a strip of leather in his hoary hand. “Let’s see what we’ve got?” 

He inspected the big fellow first. “You got any teeth?” He asked.

“Stick your finger in and find out,” the big fellow invited.

The slave trader gave him a half-hearted snap of his strap on the hip. “Come on, just show me.”

The big man bared his teeth like a snarling dog. “Raahhhh!!”

“Alright, not bad… not bad. But don’t do that while you’re up there.”

He inspected the others, glancing over the bearded fellow and the skinny Greek. “Yep, yep… say, can you read and write?”

The skinny one nodded. 

“Alright, alright, we’ll mention that. Maybe you’ll get lucky.” He moved down the line, “Oh, look at those eyes. How’d you get caught, you should have been able to see them coming no matter where they were. Ha ha ha…”

The slave-trader came to Achilles. “Oh my.” He stopped. “Look at you.”

He walked around the warrior, admiring him from all sides. “Where are you from?”

“Thessaly.”

“Ah yes, right. The East. Exotic. We’ll tell them you were a gladiator.”

“There haven’t been gladiators in a hundred years,” the bearded one said. “That was outlawed.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised, some of the outposts, things go on,” the slave trader didn’t seem to mind chatty chattel.

“Greece isn’t really an outpost,” said the bearded one.

“Carthage! We’ll say you’re from Carthage.” The slave trader decided.

The wall-eyed one spoke up. “Does he _look_ like he’s from Carthage??”

“By-blow from the royal family, sold into the arena, worked his way into the military, captured in Carthage, now he’s here.” The slave-trader improvised on the spot.

Achilles smiled despite himself. “I like it,” he admitted.

“And has all his teeth, see, that’s how you do it,” the slave trader told the big fellow. “Alright then. Crowd looks ready.”

He gestured to the guards and pointed. “Skinny ones first, save these two for last.”


	2. The Bishop

The Bishop, thin and pale, looked out the window toward the tower. His eyes were also pale, heavy-lidded, and cold. His red velvet robes were impeccable.

“He refused the Eucharist from me. He is unrepentant and haughty. I can see no indication that he is willing to renounce his heresy, and it seems certain that he would renew his hostilities against Your Royal Highness at first opportunity. I recommend that he be dealt with accordingly.”

He turned his face from the window to look at the scribe hunched over the paper.

“Read that back to me.”

He listened, nodding, and then resumed. “I further ask that Your Royal Highness authorize me to take measures against him to humble him, with a view toward the salvation of his soul rather than the comfort of his body. Dignity…” he paused thoughtfully, and then continued, “…is befitting until it becomes a weapon against God.”

The quill scratched on the paper.

“Read that back to me.”

He listened, nodding. 

“Very well, sign it and seal it up. Here’s the ring. When you’ve taken it, send in the Captain of the Guard.”

The scribe left in silence.

The Bishop moved the golden candlesticks slightly, admiring the effect of the sunlight on the gold. Then he moved them again. They weren’t lined up quite perfectly with the chalice. He liked them lined up. The monk who cleaned them hadn’t lined them up. 

The heavy, carved door opened and the Captain of the Guard entered.

“Approach. No, don’t step on the tapestry, your boots are dirty, stand at the edge.”

The Captain stood at the edge.

“Your Grace, the Executioner has already indicated that he would rather not be the one.”

The Bishop looked mildly irritated.

“He’ll be operating under the orders of the King.”

“Yes, Your Grace, but it’s no small matter.”

The Bishop looked out the window again toward the tower.

“One would rather have it performed well. A professional is best. Let it not be said that it was undignified, or unnecessarily clumsy.”

“Even so, Your Grace, I seek your permission to find another Executioner.”

The Bishop sighed. “Very well. Perhaps it would be better to choose someone less familiar with the participants. These handsome heretics have a way of affecting people, which is why—“ he turned and lifted a finger. “Which is _why_ this mustn’t go on any longer, Gregory.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And of course, he will have several more opportunities to recant. Perhaps it won’t be necessary.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Nevertheless, find someone strong, skilled, not terribly sensitive. An outsider, perhaps, if you can.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The Bishop looked out at the Tower for a moment, and then down at the base of it, where the daily slave market was underway. His gaze sharpened.

He turned and gestured to the Captain of the Guard. “Here, come here and look. No, walk around the tapestry. Now look, look down at that blond-haired brute. He looks like one who could follow a directive without any troublesome and unhealthy introspection.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Buy him. Train him. By which I mean let him chop melons in half until you can see he hits the mark. Tomorrow, I’ll need him.”

“Tomorrow, Your Grace? It’s to be… tomorrow?” The Captain was perilously close to revealing concern.

“Oh, no, but we want to give the Prince an opportunity to recant, and a young brute like that one down there might be very helpful.”

The Captain swallowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Go now, before someone else snaps him up.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”


	3. The Captain

The Captain led his new purchase into his own office.

“If I take these off, are we going to have any trouble?” Asked the Captain. He was older, but still strong. A career fighter from a decent family, Achilles surmised. The same sort of eyes as Odysseus had. Achilles felt a sudden longing to see Odysseus again. The appearance of Eudorus had awakened him to the possibility of seeing other old friends, and he found himself rather looking around for them now. He hoped Gaius had had the wit to desert Ovida along with the rest of the military. He wondered if he would ever find out.

Achilles realized the Captain was waiting for an answer. “No, no trouble,” he said calmly.

The chains were removed from his wrists, and then the Captain held the manacles up and stared at them. “These weren’t even hooked together.”

“They were, I broke them a few hours ago.” Achilles said.

The Captain stared at him.

“I had an itch.”

There was another silence. Finally, the Captain said, “What’s your name, soldier?”

Achilles remembered Max and said, “Whatever you want it to be.”

The Captain lifted his eyebrows briefly, and then tossed the cuffs into a corner. “Alright then. There’s some clothing on the table, go ahead. The privee is in there—“

“Privee?” Achilles asked.

“We don’t have any fancy Roman plumbing though, it’s just a pot, so put the lid back on when you’re done.”

“Ah,” Achilles said, and went to the privee. 

When he returned, cleaned up a bit, and clothed, the Captain was leaning against a table with his arms crossed. He looked as though he was ready to have a serious talk with his new slave.

“So, you were a gladiator. I guess I’ll call you Marcus Atilius. How’s that?”

“Atilius,” Achilles smiled. “I can remember that.”

“Mm. So, were you any good?”

Achilles gave a tip of the head. “I can fight.”

“Weapons?”

“Any weapon you want.”

“You’ve killed men?”

Achilles gave a short laugh. “Can’t even tell you how many.”

“Does it keep you up at night?”

Achilles sobered. “Not any more.”

The Captain nodded, but he looked uneasy and turned to glance out the window at the tower on the other side of the square.

“Ever chop a man’s head off?” He asked quietly.

That was very specific. “Several,” Achilles said.

“How many blows does it take?”

Achilles smiled. “One.”

The Captain looked him over thoughtfully, and then took him into a courtyard. There was a stump and a supply of gourds. Leaning against it was a weapon Achilles had never seen before. It was long, and had a curved blade affixed to one side of the end. Rather like an axe for chopping wood, but much longer, and somehow stylized.

“You want me to fight with that?” Achilles was puzzled.

“No, it’s not a fight. We need an executioner.”

“I see.” Achilles felt an uneasy chill go through him. 

“Here,” the Captain put a gourd on the stump. “See how it’s thin in the middle? That’s the neck. See if you can hit that.”

This felt very wrong, but Achilles lifted the axe and chopped the gourd neatly at the “neck” without effort.

“Oh, you are a natural killer,” the Captain said pensively. “Let’s see if that was just luck.”

A half hour later, the pile of beheaded gourds surrounding the stump left no doubt that it was not luck. And several cords of chopped wood made it clear that strength would not be an issue either.

“Well. Very well…You hungry?” The Captain asked, carefully taking the axe from him.

“Usually.” Achilles admitted, and the Captain led him to the mess hall where the guards ate, and obtained a plate of cold meat for each of them, and some water. They sat down at the end of a long, rough table in a most companionable way. Achilles had to admit, so far, slavery didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen.

“What happened to the last executioner?” Achilles asked.

“He quit,” the Captain said, taking a drink of water.

“Slaves can quit?” Achilles gave him a doubtful look.

“He wasn’t a slave. Executioners aren’t usually slaves. And if you perform well, you won’t be one long either. The church will undoubtedly be willing to—will be grateful for the service you perform.”

It seemed to Achilles that the Captain was uneasy about something. “Who is the Emperor now?” He asked.

The Captain stopped eating and stared at him. “There hasn’t been an Emperor in over a hundred years.”

Achilles nodded. “I meant… king. Is there a king?”

“Of course there’s a king. You are truly from a backwater, aren’t you? Now look, about the … what you’ll do… you are a Christian, aren’t you?”

Achilles swallowed his meat. “A what?”

The Captain’s eyes widened. “A Christian.”

“I’m Thessalonian,” Achilles said, not understanding.

“What religion were you raised in?” The Captain persisted.

“Oh, you mean what gods?” Achilles asked. “I believe in what I see, mostly. Of course… I’ve seen quite a lot,” he added wryly.

The Captain inhaled deeply, eyes rather lost. “Are you a pagan?” He whispered.

Achilles leaned forward and whispered back, “I have no idea.”

They looked at each other for another moment, and then Achilles resumed eating. “What does it matter?” He asked, after he swallowed again.

The Captain seemed not to know what to make of this.

“What’s a Christian, anyway?”

“Shh!! …You never heard of Jesus??”

“Oh, was he the one that—“ Achilles spread his arms like the crucifixes he’d seen in Philip’s church. They hadn't called themselves Christian, they had called themselves Valentinians. But apparently it was the same thing, or close enough.

“Yes! Please, put your arms down!” The Captain looked around hastily, but the few men about the mess hall were attending their own food.

“I remember him. Bardaisan wrote about him. Son of Jehovah, right?” Achilles had finished his meat and washed it down with water. Wine would have been better, but looking around, he didn’t see any evidence of it.

“Right. Son of God. Not Eternal, but Holy.” The Captain said with the air of making certain that Achilles understood an important detail.

Achilles nodded along. “You need a Christian executioner, then.”

The Captain leaned back with a sigh and his eyes grew distant and disturbed again. “When you say it like that, it sounds—“

“Who do you need me to kill?” Achilles finally said, cutting to the chase.

The Captain looked at him long and seriously. Then his eyes dropped to the table again.

“Prince Hermenegild.”

Achilles grew very still. “Who is it that wants him killed?”

“His father, the King.”

Chills ran down Achilles arms and back. This was going to be a bad one.

“That tower you keep turning and looking at. Is that where the Prince is right now?”

The Captain nodded.

“How long has he been in there?”

“Oh… months, I don’t know.”

The pain Achilles’ chest was immediate, sharp and burning. His Hector locked in a tower, facing execution by his own father. It really could not get much worse than that. Could it?

He slapped his hands on the table. “Alright, I’m done eating, let’s do it.”

Already he was looking about him for weapons. And it was probably time to fill his pockets with gold for bribes. He looked down. The floor was smooth, but outside, perhaps—

“No, no, we aren’t doing it till the King orders it. The Bishop has already written asking for permission.” The Captain gave him a quizzical look. “But I… guess I’m glad you’re not afraid. Because tomorrow, you begin.”


	4. Orders

The Bishop stood in the transept chapel admiring the new windows. Tall and narrow, with thin slices of alabaster embedded in the glass, they had a translucent, ethereal quality that pleased him aesthetically. He tipped his head this way and that, gazing up at them. Now the tapestries wouldn’t fade in direct sunlight. Very nice.

He turned his head to see the Captain of the Guard escorting in the young barbarian whom he had handpicked, he was pleased to say, as a most useful tool in the fight against heresy.

“Come. Stand there. Yes.” The Bishop stepped forward for a closer look at the church’s new purchase. “My. You are quite… yes. But the hair. You’re not Suebi, are you?”

“No, Your Grace,” Achilles answered, as he had been coached all morning by the Captain.

“Very well. There is the casket, we’ll take that up.” He pointed at a box, made of carved wood and inlaid ivory, set with jewels, and fantastically beautiful. It was about the size to hold… a human head, Achilles thought.

The Captain lifted the box with a grim demeanor, and the Bishop gestured gracefully. He seemed to move only when absolutely necessary. “Give it to… Atilius, you said? He can carry it. It seems only fitting.”

Achilles took the casket. 

“And here, this Declaration, for the Prince to sign, if he decides he would prefer to return to the church and his father’s good graces. You take that, Gregory.” 

The Bishop passed them in a stately manner, and behind him Achilles looked at the Captain.

“Gregory?” He mouthed.

“Eyes front,” the Captain breathed, and they followed the Bishop through the nave of the Cathedral and out to the porch, and into the sunshine. Across the square was the tower, and it seemed quite a public procession, the Bishop walking slowly across the square, followed by the Captain of the Guard, and the Executioner. There were plenty of civilians to stop and regard them, with what emotions, Achilles did not know. 

At the entrance to the tower was a group of women, shrouded, mostly, carrying flowers.

“Your Grace, mercy for the Prince! Mercy for the Prince,” several of them called out. “In the name of God the Father!”

The guards at the entrance kept them back, but without unnecessary roughness. One woman thrust herself forward, quite an old woman, Achilles thought. 

“Your Grace, mercy is of God!” She said.

The Bishop regarded her with politely contained disgust. “My dear woman, the Prince can leave at any time. He has only to obey his father and return to the faith, and he will be welcomed like the Prodigal Son!”

He moved past her, and Achilles could see the slight shudder of revulsion that briefly moved the Bishop’s shoulders as he escaped her blandishments. 

Once the procession was inside and the doors were shut, the Bishop looked relieved. “These women, truly, any handsome face,” he muttered.

Inside, the ground floor—which was not large—held only a table, covered with ornate fabric and three large gold crosses, and several elegantly upholstered chairs. Near the table was a stone stairwell leading up into the tower. Up there, no doubt, was his Hector, Achilles thought, looking around. No windows worth considering in terms of escape. The only way out was the entrance.

Achilles considered his assets. The Captain’s sword, a pocket full of gold pebbles, a crowd of sympathetic women, and the ability to make people sleep.

It should be fine.

Achilles turned back to see the Bishop apparently ready to address him.

“Did you brief him, Gregory?” He paused to ask.

“I didn’t want to speak for you, Your Grace.”

“Mm. Quite right, I suppose. Very well.” He turned to Achilles. “Young man, would you like to earn your freedom?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Achilles assumed that was the correct answer.

“Up those stairs awaits a most stubborn heretic; a prince who has turned against the most _indulgent _of fathers. Only two outcomes can possibly be expected. Either he signs the Declaration renouncing his heretic faith and this notion of Jesus as equal to his own Father… one can see why a Prince would admire this idea, inappropriate though it may be… or his Father the King will be forced to order him beheaded.”

He paused as if to check for understanding. Achilles nodded, and at Gregory’s eye-widening stare, uttered, “Yes, Your Grace.”

“If you can obtain his signature on this document, not only can he go free, but you will be granted your freedom as well. Yes! Even you, a slave, can be freed by the mercy of the church.”

Achilles waited impatiently for this speech to end. Hector was right up those stairs, he had no doubt.

“Yes, Your Grace,” he gamely said, hoping to hurry the fellow on.

“If you cannot obtain his permission, and his father transmits the sad decree, it will be your duty to carry it out. That, too, can earn your freedom.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Those are the only two possible outcomes. He cannot die in custody before his father wills it, you understand? If he dies while you are attempting to obtain his signature upon that Declaration, you die with him.”

The Bishop gave Achilles a meaningful stare.

Now Achilles was confused. Why would he die… he inhaled deeply, finally understanding the nature of his job. A cascade of horror shivered down his back, like trickles of water.

“If you open the casket, you’ll find various tools that are at your disposal. If you are tempted to be merciful, remember that the Prince is in control of these proceedings. He will undoubtedly endure as much as he chooses to, and no more. If he signs the Declaration, you are to stop immediately, and Gregory will bring you and the Declaration to me.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” he said automatically, his mind reeling.

“Gregory, do go up and apprise the Prince that another _opportunity_ is on its way,” the Bishop said delicately, and seemed to wait with lowered eyes until he was certain that the Captain of the Guard was high enough in the tower not to hear his next words.

“You look like a young man who has enjoyed life before,” the Bishop said carefully. “The Prince is very proud. He does not know humility. If you decide, as a man, to humble him in …whatever ways you know how, it is in the service of God, and therefore not forbidden.”

Achilles felt as if his head were floating off. His eyes were icy gray.

“In short, I authorize you to use whatever means you may to obtain that signature. The only two caveats are, do not try to forge it yourself, I know the Prince’s hand, and, of course, do not kill him, or render him too damaged to sign. He’s right-handed, so—ah, Gregory.”

The Bishop turned, and Achilles stood still, feeling his heart thump with a kind of dread he’d never before experienced.

“Well, I will return to my duties. I leave the Prince in the hands of you two soldiers of God.”

The Bishop exited, and Gregory went and slowly sat in one of the chairs, staring away. He did not look as though he enjoyed his duties.

Achilles stared at him for a moment. “Have you ever…?” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

The Captain shook his head, eyes bleak. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.”

Achilles nodded. “That’s good.” _Because I am going to start killing people shortly, and you don’t want to be on that list._

Gregory looked up at him. “But others have.”

Achilles could hear the roar of the tide in his ears now.

“Go on up. The door bolt lifts up from the outside, and when you close it, it falls and locks automatically. There’s a bell by the door. Ring it when you’re ready to leave and I’ll come get you.”

Achilles mounted the stairs. His eagerness was tamped now, and his chest was full of liquid dread. He did not know what he might find.


	5. The Prisoner

Achilles opened the iron door and stepped into the cold, stone chamber. It was sparsely furnished. The bed was essentially a large stone step protruding from the wall with a cot and sheets upon it. There was a table and chair. In the corner was a chamber pot. The two windows, facing north and east, were barred. All this Achilles absorbed without much looking at it.

On the bed, back against the wall, was his Hector. His hair was long and wild, his beard still somewhat groomed, but fuller than he liked it. He was swathed in sheets.

Achilles stepped in carefully, setting the scroll and box of horrors on the table, watching his prince.

Hector did not look at him or speak, but only stared sternly ahead, as if willing himself into enduring an ordeal.

The warrior went slowly to the bed, not wanting to frighten him. He was just opening his mouth to say, “We must get you out of here,” when his gaze fell upon Hector’s right foot.

Achilles wavered, and then sat on the bed, staring at the bloody wreckage of his love’s foot. The bones were broken, the skin was lacerated and infected, bloody and damaged—Achilles had only fainted once in his life: when Hector went over the cliff. Here, in this moment, he came perilously close to repeating that adventure.

Eyes wide, he carefully lifted the sheet that covered the other foot. Yes, it was the same.

Achilles was overcome for a moment. Then he inhaled and grimly set himself to righting this.

Carefully, ever so gently, he touched Hector’s foot with his fingers. His prince gripped the sheets, and his face settled even more sternly, bracing himself. Closing his eyes, Achilles set himself to healing.

The silence in the room was unbroken. Achilles concentrated only his breathing, and on mentally pouring himself into the bones and tendons of the damaged extremity, imagining it as it should be, and coaxing it toward that perfect vision. _Heal,_ he told it gently, _heal._ He didn’t want to overwhelm his Hector, and he knew now from his experience with Victor that panicked mental screaming was not the way.

He opened his eyes to check the foot. Yes, it looked better, but the bones… how could he get his beloved out of this tower on broken feet?? If only he could fly! 

Achilles closed his hands over the foot, now that the infection was gone, perhaps he could hold it without causing too much pain. He closed his eyes again and sank into a trance of healing. Gently, gently, _heal… heal…_ he caressed the bones with his fingertips, trying to guide them back into alignment.

Suddenly, he became aware that his Hector was shifting, and making just the smallest noises in his throat.

Achilles looked up to see that even aligning the bones was hurting him. _Alright, a little at a time,_ he decided.

He turned and touched the other foot very lightly and applied the same procedure. First, to heal the infection of the skin. Then, to hold it in his hands and just coax the bones a little back toward their proper position. When he felt his Hector shifting painfully again, he stopped and released his hold.

The prince stared down at his feet, eyes flicking back and forth between them as if unable to comprehend what they were seeing. His throat moved in a silent swallow and his breathing had sped up. But he looked afraid to speak, or move.

Achilles himself was too overcome to say anything. Suddenly, it seemed to him that there was nothing to say. This Hector did not know him, and the loss of Victor and Philip both were still very fresh. But more than that, the sense of what this man must have been going through, this person who had a lifetime of experiences that did not feature Achilles… suddenly his own feelings of loss, his own fear of failure, his need to love his Hector, fell away before the imperative before him. This had nothing to do with Hector knowing him, or remembering him, or loving him. It certainly had no element, at the moment, of romance or passion. 

This was the man he loved and wanted to protect more than anything… in a torture chamber. In the hands of a ghoul. Who knew what scars were on his soul right now? Hermenegild, they called him. He had no need of being Hector, or Aeneas, or Philip, or Victor. Being Hermenegild was pain enough.

“Where else are you hurt?” He asked quietly.

Hermenegild eyed him in silence, plainly afraid that this initial kindness was only a softening measure, and when no capitulation resulted, would be followed up by renewed cruelty.

Achilles nodded. “I see.” There was no point in verbal assurances. He pushed the sheet carefully up to check his beloved’s well-shaped legs, and was relieved to see the knees were not damaged, although they were bruised from kneeling... or crawling. He placed his hands gently on them for a moment, concentrating, and then moved up. 

Lacerations on the thighs, he noted as calmly and dispassionately as he could. His own angst could not help his beloved, only his powers and ministrations. He controlled his breathing and pulled the sheets away, putting his hands carefully on the wounds. When he took them away, they were improved, but Achilles cursed the weakness of his powers.

Checking carefully, he saw no damage to the genitals, and moved up to the ribs. They were badly bruised. He moved up to sit at his Hector’s side and placed his hands on the bruises. They faded nicely. Achilles pressed carefully to see if the ribs were broken. By Hector’s wince, he felt that they were at least very bruised, and applied his concentration again.

Finally, he looked this wounded stranger that he loved in the eye and said, “I need to see your back. I need to see what else they have done.”

Hermenegild stared stubbornly over his shoulder, dark eyes wide, and shook his head slightly. His lips were pursed tight.

Achilles’ heart sank. The back must be even worse than the front. He brought his hands up to his Hector’s face, ignoring how he stiffened, leaning away in trepidation, and touched his forehead. “Sleep,” he said quietly, and guided him over onto his side.

For a moment, he had to turn away and lean over, his arms on his knees, eyes wide and pale. It wasn’t his back, there was only some bruising there. It was the puddle of blood he was sitting in.

There was no doubt in his mind what had been done to his Hector. 

After the nausea passed, he turned back and slid his hand gently down into the crevice of the pale buttocks and thought, _Heal, heal, heal… _when he withdrew his fingers, there was blood. 

Mind blank, but with murder in his guts, Achilles went to the pitcher of water on the table and washed his hands. Then he took one of the sheets, dipped it in the water, and used it to clean the helpless man unconscious on his stony bed. Finally he went and rang the bell.

When Gregory arrived and opened the door, Achilles was holding the bloody sheets. 

“I need clean sheets for him, and fresh water.”

Gregory looked at the sheets and then at Achilles. Even he could see that the blood was dried and old. Most of it. He swallowed and nodded, taking them gingerly.

“If anyone asks, I’m still at work. Gregory. Do you approve of what is being done to the prince?” Achilles had to know.

The Captain shook his head. “Don’t ask me this.” He said in a low voice. “My career, my life depends on my ability to carry out orders and voice no opinion.”

Achilles grabbed his wrist and thought _Speak._ Gregory’s eyes widened. “I hate this. Hermenegild is a saint, and the Bishop is a monster.”

Achilles released him, and Gregory stared at him. “Oh, God,” he mumbled.

“Don’t worry. Go. Bring the sheets and water.”

For the rest of the day, Achilles tended to his damaged love. He used the prince’s unconsciousness to tend the feet again, drawing on the bones to pull them straight, pouring all the healing and power he could into them. They still needed work, but he felt he must let them rest for now. He slid his fingers between the buttocks again, checking for blood. He rolled him over on the clean sheets when they arrived, and straightened him as comfortably as he could. He caressed every single bruise and welt until it faded away. He even combed his fingers through the curly dark hair, looking for wounds on the scalp—and found one, and tended to it. 

When late afternoon left the chamber in shadow, Achilles lit the candles and opened the casket of horrors. Most of the evil little iron tools inside, he didn’t even recognize. He pulled them out and looked around for a place to put them. Finally, he noticed a cracked stone in the wall. He pushed and pulled at it till he pried it away, and shoved the instruments into the hollow. Then he replaced the stone, pushing it in with all his considerable strength. He could hear the tools being crushed within, and was satisfied. 

Finally, he simply sat at the table, watching the candles burn, watching his beloved sleep. The sky outside turned a deeper blue.

“Atilius,” he heard Gregory’s voice at the door.

He went to the door. 

“The servants have brought food. The Bishop wants a report.” 

Gregory opened the door and Achilles took the plate of bread and meat. He waited until the servant retreated. 

“Tell the Bishop whatever will make him happy. I intend to stay the night in here. Tell him I’m … humbling the Prince, who is very proud and stubborn… Oh, tell him anything!” Achilles said, suddenly losing temper.

Gregory nodded, and then hesitated. “You know… many people have this reaction to the prince. They either hate him with a passion, and you’ve seen their work now. Or they fall in love. But you must not fall in love with him, because I guarantee you two things,” the Captain told him earnestly. “One is that he will never give in and sign that Declaration renouncing his faith. He is utterly convinced of the rightness of his beliefs. And two… he’s going to be killed. And you will have to be the one to do it.”

Achilles listened to him calmly, and then nodded. “Tell the Bishop I’m hard at work. Perhaps you can put off this execution for a day or two.”

Gregory sighed in defeat. “Yes. I will try. But once I leave, you’re locked in with him.” 

Achilles gave another brief nod. He was fairly sure he could damage the door enough to open it if need be, but he had no intention of doing so. As long as no one came in, he could guard his beloved. The goal was to keep him safe until his feet were healed enough to walk.

Then it would be time to escape. Simple as that.


	6. Trust Issues

His Hector awoke early in the evening, coming awake with a jerk and a cry, as if from a bad dream. He turned to see the blond warrior sitting at the table, watching the candles burn, his long locks pushed back behind his ears.

“Are you hungry?” 

Hermenegild looked over at the chamber pot and made a slight grimace.

“Privacy is not an option,” Achilles told him wryly. “Can you stand?”

He watched as the prince placed his feet gingerly on the floor. His face pinched up with pain, but he hobbled carefully to the pot.

Achilles stood once and held out his hand, but the prince lifted a palm as if to ward him off. 

“No,” he said.

_So you can talk,_ Achilles thought. But unlike with Philip, he felt no urge to tease him, or establish communications. It may be that he would fail again, and lose him, like Victor. There was no point trying to connect, particularly with someone who had endured so much, and was so fanatically committed to a point—one which Achilles suspected was nonsense on the level of arguing over what color Aphrodite’s hair was.

He would heal him, Achilles decided, and save him from this tower and certain death. After that? Perhaps he … he tried to tell himself perhaps he’d just let the prince go. See him to safety, and then turn and walk into the sea. Go back to his mother’s island. Be done with this. But something in him resisted going that far.

Achilles sighed and put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. He was at a loss. 

His prince finished urinating into the pot and put the lid on it wearily, and then turned and hobbled carefully back to his bed, and crawled into the clean sheets, stopping to examine them quietly before pulling them over his nakedness.

“So. Are you an angel or a demon?” Came a husky voice from the bed.

Startled, Achilles turned and looked at Hermenegild. The prince was regarding him with steady eyes, through the curls that nearly covered them.

“Would a demon heal your wounds?” Achilles asked him. He wasn’t sure what a demon was, but if it was opposite from angel, it was probably bad.

“He might. I see you have the Bishop’s Declaration, ready for me to sign.”

“Yeah,” Achilles said, suddenly weary. Every time. His Hector was in some nonsense up to his neck every time. And here was Achilles, in it with him, out of love.

“I will never sign it.” The prince stated calmly.

“Yes, I know,” Achilles said dully. He was tired. “You know what? I need some sleep.”

He got up and came to the bed, sitting on the edge of it to pull his boots off. “These are nice,” he said absently, looking at them for a moment. Boots had not been a feature of his previous lives. Then he pulled off the long sleeved garment they’d given him to wear over his tunic.

“Are you cold?” He asked.

“No more than usual,” the prince said, watching him carefully.

“Alright,” Achilles said, and climbed up to lie next to the prince. When he sank his head onto the pillow, he gave a sigh of contentment. 

His prince seemed to be attempting to struggle out of the bed again. 

“No, don’t.” Achilles said. “Let your feet rest.”

The prince ignored him, and finally the warrior lost patience. He grabbed the prince’s head. “Sleep,” he said again, and when his Hector sank down against him, Achilles rolled him on his side, covered him with the sheet, curled up behind him, and faded off. 

He woke in the morning before his Hector and looked over at him. Even in his sleep, he seemed to expect pain. The only times Achilles had seen that face utterly peaceful was in death. It was a disturbing realization.

Achilles removed himself quietly from the cot and got a drink of water from the pitcher, using a simple tin mug that rested on the table. He swished the water around in his mouth for a while, wishing for something to pick his teeth with. Then he poured more water and took it to the cot, bringing a chair close to sit it on.

Now the warrior applied himself to the feet again. He cradled one long foot gently and studied it, trying to see what would still be causing pain. The wounds were pink and fading now, but the alignment of the bones must still be off. He closed his eyes and drew his fingers up and down the bones of the foot, imagining them straight and applying that expectation, as if telling the extremity what he wanted it to look like. 

After a bit, he opened his eyes and looked at it. He thought it had improved, and before putting it down, on impulse, pressed a tender kiss to the top of it. No matter if his Hector was unfriendly, did not know him, and was embroiled in some nonsense that meant nothing, he was still Hector to Achilles. He gave the arch a kiss as well. It wasn’t the cleanest foot in the world, but it was his prince’s.

Achilles put it down carefully, and picked up the other, holding it in both hands and closing his eyes. He was unaware that the dark eyes at the other end of that long, well-made form, had long since opened and were watching him carefully.

When he finished tending to his Hector’s feet, he heard a timid tap at the door. A servant was there to bring food and remove the chamber pot for emptying.

Achilles allowed him in, and held the door so he wouldn’t be locked in with the two of them. When he left, Achilles brought the plate to the bed.

Hermenegild refused the food, but stared at it longingly.

“Why don’t you eat?” Achilles said, helping himself to a portion of meat.

The prince looked at him bitterly for a moment, and then finally said drily, “What goes in must come out.”

Achilles straightened up in alarm. “Are you still in pain?”

The prince seemed to assess himself for a moment, shifting minutely. His face was a study of conflicting emotions. “No.” Then his dark eyes took on an accusing glare. “What did you do?”

Achilles raised his brows. “I healed you.”

“You put your hands on me while I was sleeping.” The prince stated.

Achilles spread those hands as if to say, _Well, yes, that’s how it’s done._

The prince looked as though he resented the healing almost as much as the violation. “I will not sign that Declaration,” he warned Achilles hotly.

“Eat,” Achilles said, not wanting to get into a discussion of his Hector’s situation.

“There is no point,” Hermenegild said, eyeing the food hungrily. “I’ll be dead soon.”

Achilles felt a hot little jolt of anger down his spine. “I don’t think so,” he said grimly, but remembering Victor, forbore to be too confident. “Eat just a bit. You’ll be stronger if you eat.”

Eventually, his beloved took the proffered meat and ate it. Achilles watched him in satisfaction, and ate the bread companionably along with him. 

“So what’s a demon?” He asked. 

“They are the tormentors of Hell,” Hermenegild told him, watching him closely.

Hell was like Hades, Achilles remembered from his life with Philip. He’d never paid much attention to his beloved’s strange beliefs, but one picks things up.

“I’m not a demon. If I’m going to torment someone, I’ll do it right here,” Achilles said, thinking of the Bishop, and anyone else he could identify as one of Hector’s torturers.

“I think you must be an angel.” Hermenegild said, but with such a dark tone, Achilles was a bit taken aback. Philip had called him his angel all the years they were together, and it had always seemed like an affectionate, wondrous name. 

Hermenegild said it like it was the forerunner of doom.

Achilles looked him over, troubled at the tone.

“The most beautiful angel of all, they say,” Hermenegild added, and his eyes were fastened upon the warrior as if he were a poisonous snake.


	7. Preparations

The sound of activity on the stairs leading to the chamber startled them away from each other’s eyes, and Achilles went to the door to find the Captain of the Guard approaching with anguished eyes.

“It’s time,” he breathed in warning. “Or at least, it’s starting.”

Behind him, several soldiers were laboring to bring something long and heavy up the stone steps. They opened the door and struggled in, carrying a long box with a lid. When they had deposited it, two of them remained and stood aside as more soldiers came in bearing a much smaller box, and a heavy block of wood.

Achilles hovered tensely near the bed, already assessing how many swords were in his reach, and whether killing the soldiers or making them sleep was most efficient. To his agitated confusion, the last person to enter was a small, old man with all the accoutrements of a barber come to give a man a haircut and shave.

The Captain of the Guard bowed to the prince without making eye contact.

“The Bishop wished me to inform Your Highness that he will be here at noon to give you one more … opportunity to recant. Your father’s letter arrived this morning. The Bishop is authorized to act in accordance with his conscience.”

“Very well. Good-bye, Gregory,” Hermenegild said quietly.

The Captain’s eyes lifted to meet the dark ones, and his misery was apparent. But he only bowed again, clearly heartsick, and left the chamber with tight lips to stand guard outside the door.

“What’s all this,” Achilles gestured abruptly, eyeing it all uneasily.

The little barber was removing his implements from a small leather apron that he had laid on the table.

“A courtesy,” he said calmly. “Your Highness will want locks of hair given to his loved ones for remembrance rings.”

“Yes,” Hermenegild rose carefully from the bed, placing his feet gingerly on the cold stone floor. He seemed surprised to find that he could walk. He pulled the sheets with him and went to sit at in the chair. “Thank you.”

“I requested the honor, Sire,” the little barber said with quiet respect.

Achilles was having none of it. “What is that? Is that a blade?”

“I’m just going to shave his Royal Highness, sir, and cut off the hair for posterity. Also, you yourself will want nothing on his neck to impede your work.”

Achilles stared at them both as if they were utterly mad. 

“My head might be on display. I would prefer to look like myself.” Hermenegild said with a trace of dark amusement.

“If you cut him with that thing,” Achilles warned, eyes wide, finger brandished at the little barber. “I will slice you into ribbons.”

The old barber looked more offended than frightened. “I have been doing this longer than you have been alive, young man.”

Achilles mightily doubted that, but settled for watching nervously as the barber soaped and shaved the prince. He then cut the locks of hair close to his head, and laid them carefully out on the table in rows.

“Have you made a list, Your Highness?” The barber asked.

“I have no paper. Except that, of course,” he glanced disparagingly at the Declaration. “I suppose I could use the back. It might please the Bishop to see it wasn’t entirely wasted.” That was definitely another tiny twig of doomed humor.

Achilles watched, trying not to notice how the shave and haircut made him look like Victor, and how seeing every plane of that beloved face made him even more anxious to extract him from this vile place, and these mad, mad people. Sadly, it seemed that Hermenegild was one of the mad people Achilles must save his Hector from.

Finally, he noticed the smallest box on the table. He went instantly to open it, fearing some new tool of misadventure and pain, but it was empty.

“That’s for my heart.” Hermenegild told him calmly. “They’ll put my head in this box, my body in that one, and my heart I have requested be interred in the church.”

Achilles slammed the lid back down, sickened. “And you prefer that to signing a paper about—“

“The nature of the divinity of Jesus is not an unimportant detail,” his Hector said evenly, staring up at him. His eyes looked very large now that his hair was short curls. With the whiskers gone, Achilles could see how thin his cheeks were now, and suddenly noted the too-defined jaw and neck.

“Shall I take the locks with me, Your Highness?” The barber asked quietly.

Hermenegild turned his face away from Achilles. “Yes. If I am not allowed to make a list, I think you know my allies and my enemies. Can I leave it to you, John?”

Achilles noted the softened tone with which his Hector addressed his subordinates. Some things never changed.

“It’s the only thing I can do for you, Your Highness.” The barber said, and it was clear that, like the Captain of the Guard, he was close to tears.

When the barber was allowed out of the door by the Captain, Hector stayed in the chair with the sheet around him. He suddenly seemed too hopeless to move. 

“If I signed it, the Bishop would burn it right in front of me and order my head cut off even so.” He said, staring at nothing.

“Why?” Achilles asked shortly, uncertain whether he would ever get to the bottom of any of this.

“After the things that have been done to me in this room,” the prince said softly, “he cannot risk me ever attaining my rightful place again.”

“You are mistaken, Your Royal Highness,” said a cold voice at the door. “My only motivation is the salvation of your soul, and the protection of the sacred kingdom of your father’s reign.”

The door opened, and the Bishop entered, followed by four armed guards. One carried the executioner’s axe. Another carried a whip made of woven wires whose uneven ends were twisted into tiny stars. Achilles stared at it, thinking that every moment he believed he could not be more horrified, another moment came and proved him wrong. At this point, he was positively dizzy.


	8. The Sound of Tables Turning

Hermenegild stared grimly at the wall before him. At the entrance of the Bishop, the lines on either side of his nose deepened, and his eyes became large and fixed. Defiance covered the fear that must be there.

_If the sea god had let me drown, he would be alone with them, _Achilles thought, and for one of the few times in his life, experienced gratitude so profound, it nearly made him double over.

“In fact, I offer you the opportunity once more, before all of these witnesses, to recant your heresy and sign the Declaration sent to you by the most _indulgent_ of fathers,” the Bishop stated smoothly. 

Silence fell as Hermenegild stared stubbornly at the wall, unmoving.

“Very well. I must make certain that your father will be able to see with his own eyes that I urged you with every possible means. Place the manacles.”

One of the guards stepped forward with a pair of rusty iron shackles and affixed the prince’s wrists together. He stared at the wall, unresisting, but with the fierce glare of defiance still burning in his eyes.

“Lay the Prince on the bed and remove the sheet,” the Bishop directed the soldiers, who stepped forward and grabbed the prince’s arms. They dragged him to the bed, one holding each arm, and a third joined in to pin his legs and rip the sheet from him.

The Bishop inspected the long, pale form. The prince was perfect and unblemished, and the prefect’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe I understand. I was informed that he had been encouraged very firmly over the last weeks. I saw to some of our efforts myself.”

_Did you? _Thought Achilles, and his breathing slowed as it did just before he attacked.

The Bishop turned to him. “Atilius, take the whip and show me how you encourage a sinner to repent.”

Achilles went calmly to the last guard, who held the whip. He took it in his hand, put his other hand to the fellow’s forehead, and said, “Sleep.”

The guard crumpled, and Achilles turned with the whip in hand. Then he walked to the nearest of the guards restraining his Hector. “Sleep,” he said, taking out the next one. 

At this point, the other two guards realized that something very odd was happening. One backed away in superstitious fear, but he was against the wall and Achilles simply tagged him as he went by—“Sleep”—however, the other drew his sword and prepared to fight. The Bishop’s eyes were darting about as well.

“Now,” Achilles said, eyes burning gray as he stared at the last guard. “You have a choice. You can remove the manacles from the prince, or you can try your skills against mine.”

Hermenegild had moved back against the wall on his cot and pulled the sheets over his nakedness. His eyes were wide and he looked uncertain whom to be more afraid of.

The guard seemed unable to decide, and stood wavering, his sword in hand.

Achilles brought the whip slowly up to the Bishop’s face and ran a sharp, pointed edge across his cheek, raising a line of blood. The man stepped back in alarm, but the table was behind him.

“Gregory,” The Bishop called sharply toward the door. “Get in here and get this barbarian!”

“Gregory,” Achilles echoed coldly, eyes never leaving his prey. “Stay.”

The door stayed shut. The Captain of the Guard stood just outside, eyes closed, hand over his mouth.

“Tell your man to put down his sword and do as I say,” Achilles recommended.

The Bishop hesitated. Achilles gave his face another caress with the whip.

“Do you want an opportunity?” Achilles asked, drawing the whip back as if to slash it right across the Bishop’s pale face.

“Do as he says,” the Bishop instructed, his eyes blazing with suppressed rage.

The guard laid his sword on the floor and removed the shackles from Hermenegild, and then waited, trembling, for further instructions.

“I want the Bishop quiet. Tear the sheets. Make a gag. And do it quickly.”

When the Bishop was gagged, Achilles admired the way the huge bundle of cloth forced his jaws wide.

“Now, you could easily lift your hands and remove that, but if you do, I will flog you until you are unrecognizable.” When Achilles was angry, he might shout, but when he was in the throes of murderous rage, his voice was quiet and flat.

Finally, he lowered the whip and advanced on the last guard, who backed away from him nervously until he was up against the wall.

“Sleep.” He fell.

Achilles turned back. “Now it’s just the three of us.” He said, his face blank. “Take off those robes.”


	9. Lucifer

The Bishop hesitated, and Achilles raised the whip again, drawing it gently over his other cheek, and then under his chin, leaving thin trails of blood wherever it went.

Finally, the Bishop, hands beginning to shake, removed his heavy, red velvet robes.

“Give them to the prince. And the shoes. And that ridiculous hat. And the robes beneath. All of it.”

When the Bishop was divested of his clothing, and shivering in the thinnest of shifts, barefoot, Achilles turned to his beloved. “Get off the bed and get into this costume.”

Hermenegild hesitated. “This will not work,” he predicted.

“Do as I say or I will make you sleep too, and then I’ll do with you as I see fit.” Achilles said in clipped tones. He was in no mood to reason with his beloved. He’d tried reasoning with Victor.

The prince removed himself from the bed and donned the robes, eyes large with worry.

“Good. Now go over there, out of the way,” Achilles said. “This is going to take a while.”

He flung the whip down and picked up the manacles. Yanking the Bishop’s arms together before him, he placed the shackles on, and tightened them until he heard his captive inhale with pain. 

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Achilles asked him, and pushed him down on the bed. The Bishop’s pale blue eyes stared over the gag at him in outrage. “Ah, and this ring. I think we’ll need this ring,” the warrior remarked, pulling it off and tossing it on the table.

“You see,” Achilles said, turning back and looking down at him. “What the people expect to see leaving this Tower, this afternoon, is a live Bishop, and a dead prince. We have our Bishop,” he turned to gesture at Hermenegild, who was against the far wall, watching in confused dread.

“You are going to be our prince.” Achilles said softly, and now his eyes were like marble. Never had he felt hatred like this before, and the calm that descended over him was the stillness that comes from the perfect assurance that the coming moments would bring more satisfaction than anything had in years.

“But your body must look like the prince. You must look like you have suffered,” Achilles explained in a reasonable tone.

The Bishop’s eyes widened in terror, cringing back as Achilles knelt and took one pale foot in both of his hands. The warrior gazed up the Bishop’s face as he slowly tightened his grip with every bit of strength he possessed. He watched, head tipped interestedly as his victim’s pale eyes bulged with shocked pain. The cracking of the bones, and the Bishop’s muffled screams were loud in the stone chamber.

The Captain of the Guard stared through the window, his hands clutching the bars. Hermenegild flattened himself against the wall in horror. Achilles breathed slowly through flared nostrils, and watched calmly as the Bishop writhed in agony, shaking his head wildly, kicking desperately at him with his other foot. When he’d destroyed one foot, Achilles grabbed the other and slowly crushed it also, as the Bishop struggled frantically and screamed into the rags. Finally, his victim fainted with the pain.

Achilles left him limp on the bed and prowled to the table for a cup of water, eyes unseeing. He drank it and waited patiently. There was more to do, much more, and he wanted the Bishop awake for every bit of it.

The sun moved across the blue sky over the tower and the town square. The pool of sunlight that morning always cast on the chamber floor through the east window gradually grew thinner until it was gone. It was nearly noon.

Hermenegild was on the floor in the corner of the chamber, listening in horror as the blond warrior continued his punishment of the Bishop. Having endured much of the same treatment, he knew exactly the feeling of the whip tearing chunks from his thighs, of the fists cracking the ribs with heavy, rhythmic thuds. Even the sounds plunged him back into the nightmare of pain.

There was little doubt in his mind now that this was Lucifer. The calm concentration on his face as he tore into the writhing man on the bloody bed, the sheer force and strength he exuded, and the undeniable beauty of that serene face and flowing hair… it could only be a being once made pure, and now fallen to bring hellfire.

At one point, the Captain of the Guard opened the door and stepped half way in to say weakly, “No more, please, no more.”

“Did you intervene when they did it to him?” Achilles paused to point one hand at the folded up form in red velvet, whose hands were clutched at his short dark curls as he tried to blot out the sounds. In the warrior’s other hand, the whip hung down, dripping the Bishop’s blood.

Overcome, Gregory retreated back outside the door, eyes glazed.

Achilles inspected his moaning victim. The Bishop’s breathing was so harsh, each exhale was a convulsive, muffled sob soaking into the damp gag in his jaws.

“You did this. You did this to the most worthy soul I have ever known,” Achilles said, eyes burning. “You are fortunate I don’t have the time to make this last as long as you deserve. Now, however, I think it’s time to cut out your heart.”

The warrior went to one of the sleeping guards—how Hermenegild envied the sleeping guards—and pulled a knife from his belt. Then he went to the table, picked up the small box, and brought it back to the bed.

“I’ll make sure it goes in the church,” Achilles told the Bishop, whose eyes bulged as Achilles ripped open what was left of his shift to bare his chest.

Hermenegild looked up in time to see the warrior plunge the knife into the Bishop’s chest and start carving. 

A half hour later, Achilles stood, blood dripping from both hands, and surveyed the chamber in satisfaction. Four sleeping guards, a catatonic prince, a decapitated body in a pine box, the unrecognizable head in another box, the heart in a third box… yes, everything was where it needed to be, he decided.

Finally he glanced down at his own blood-soaked clothing.

“Gregory, I’ll need a change of clothes,” he called, and went to wash his hands in the water left in the pitcher. The Captain pulled himself back up by the bars in the windows and stared in at him in dazed shock. 

“Wait,” Achilles looked down at himself. “No, I guess I don’t. This is what I would have looked like had I followed the Bishop’s orders, isn’t it?” He felt positively cheerful now.

The Captain gingerly opened the door.

“I feel certain,” Achilles told him calmly, drying his hands as he stood in the midst of the bloody carnage, “that when the procession leaves here with the Bishop,” he pointed at his Hector, “covering his face with his linen in sorrow, and you following with the box carrying the head, and my blood-soaked self following with the box with the heart, and these four following with the box carrying the prince’s corpse… no one out there will be looking at the Bishop. They will be staring at those boxes. We just have to get across the square and into the church.”

Hermenegild and Gregory said nothing, both staring dizzily at the pine box.

“Yes, like that. We just need to wake up the guards,” Achilles said reasonably. He turned to his traumatized prince. “Don’t let them see your face.”


	10. The Scribe

“Your Royal Highness, I am writing with heaviest heart to inform you that Prince Hermenegild was unwilling to the last to recant his heresy and rejoin his family in…”

Gregory paused in his pacing, brows furrowed in concentration.

“Acknowledging…?” the scribe suggested, looking up.

“Acknowledging the … writing?” Gregory searched.

“Doctrine. He would say doctrine,” the scribe nodded.

“Acknowledging the doctrine—“ Gregory resumed pacing, making certain that his boots crossed the tapestry each time.

“Holy doctrine,” the scribe murmured, writing smoothly.

“—held by… who was it he always quoted?” Gregory mused, fingering his chin.

“—embraced by … mm… Eusebius of Ni-co-media.”

“Right. We gave the prince every opportunity,” here Gregory and the scribe exchanged meaningful glances, “and indeed put such pressure to bear on him that he could have... oh... succumbed without shame had he chosen to, and…”

“succumbed… without… shame…” the scribe wrote swiftly, “and… and… mmm… looked back without fear of being found too easily swayed, however…”

Gregory nodded, “Oh yes, that sounds exactly like the Bishop. Hm. Without fear of being found too easily swayed however ultimately he rejected every olive branch that your most indulgent Highness offered him—“

“Most _Indulgent_ Highness offered him,” the scribe mimicked.

“Thus it is my sad duty to inform your majesty that your edict—“ 

“The Royal Edict,” the scribe corrected primly.

“Royal Edict was carried out at noon exactly on April 13th in this Year of Our Lord, 585AD.” Gregory finished.

“Was it exactly noon?” The scribe paused to ask.

Gregory shrugged. “And put the bit about enclosing the locks of hair,” he added. 

The office was quiet for a moment, but for the scratching of the quill.

Gregory waited until the scribe had caught up to him. “Now the bit about… with Your Highness’s permission, the Prince’s body will be interred with all fitting honor…”

“All fitting respect,” the scribe suggested. “Oh! All fitting respect _having rejected the honor_ that was his birthright.”

Gregory smiled and shook his head. “You have the man completely,” he admitted.

The scribe preened a bit, and then continued writing.

“If the King ever does wish to look at the body, the head will be—“ Gregory made a face to complete the thought.

“It’s already fairly—“ the scribe made the same face.

“And if need be, we could say the head was … lost?” Gregory suggested.

“Stolen! By heartbroken villagers!” The scribe was warming to his new career in inventing legends.

Gregory nodded, and then grimaced. “Some of those women actually would if they could.”

“Imagine their surprise, when…?” suggested the scribe, and the two of them grinned at the thought.

“Now, we must put the Bishop on the move. Where shall we say he has gone, to retreat and pray, in the aftermath of this most tragic episode?” Gregory said, returning to the task at hand.

“Gades?”

“No! No, Atilius and the Prince are on the road to Gades at this moment, I would prefer that we never breathe the name of that town again. Cordoba. We’ll send the Bishop to Cordoba.”

“Yes, much better,” the scribe acknowledged.

“Once you’ve signed it and sealed it with his ring, he is, as far as we know, gone.”

The scribe nodded, looking with doting pleasure on the ring as it lay on the desk near the golden candlestick holders.

“I’ll write another letter to the Diocese of Cordoba announcing his intention to visit.”

Gregory nodded. “When he never arrives, they’ll think he was waylaid, perhaps.”

“Reasonable assumption,” the scribe commented, sealing the first letter.

“It’s a pity, really.” Gregory commented. “You mimic him so perfectly and you have his ring. If the people of Hispalis didn’t know what he looked like, you could have stepped into his robes and no one the wiser.”

The scribe chuckled in agreement as he drew another sheet of parchment paper into position. A sudden notion seemed to strike them both at once: the people of Cordoba did NOT know what the Bishop looked like. They turned to look at one another very thoughtfully.


	11. On the Road

Achilles rode along the dusty road in the late afternoon sun, admiring the seat of his Hector, before him. Just a gentleman and his man-servant, traveling from Hispalis to Gades. Even now, miles behind them, many citizens of the Prince’s former residence were mourning their martyred prince, walking past the ornate casket that the bloody remains had been transferred into—with plenty of witnesses. 

As for Hermenegild, he rode without much awareness, and his face was set in wide-eyed bleakness. His mind was having difficulty processing the correct attitude for his new situation.

He was free of his prison, and no longer in pain. This in and of itself could only be regarded as a blessing. He had escaped the defamation and humiliation that he had most feared: not that he would be tortured again and finally martyred—he had prepared himself for that—but that he would be overcome, that he would be unable to endure what his faith had called upon him to endure. That he would fail his Lord. That he would sign.

Happily, he had not signed that cursed Declaration denying the Eternal Nature of Christ, a devilish interpretation that lowered the Messiah to the level of the pagan Greek offshoot of a randy god disguised as a swan. Such a deviation from the faith could only be the work of those determined to render it more compatible with the surrounding religions. But the point of the True Religion was that it NOT be compatible, or interchangeable, with others.

But he had escaped without compromising himself.

Ah, but to whom did he owe that escape? He glanced behind him uneasily at the golden-haired barbarian with wide, relaxed shoulders, and hips that moved fluidly with the swaying canter of his mount. The blue eyes met his immediately, and the full lips—particularly that lower lip—curved slightly in a satisfied manner. 

Hermenegild was very conflicted about his deliverer. From the instant the handsome stranger had entered his cell and touched his feet so gently, and with such concern, the prince had struggled to understand the portent of this appearance. From one moment to the next moment he swung from believing that his Lord had sent an angel to rescue him, to fearing that Lucifer himself had swooped in to seize him, no doubt for dark reasons of his own. Whoever Atilius was, he was not human. Of course, healing with his hands did not seem like a gift that Lucifer would possess. But striking people down into a coma for hours at a time? That did.

The tenderness with which this being had cradled and kissed Hermenegild’s feet had sent thrills of gratitude and longing through him that he had stifled only with the greatest effort. The savagery manifested only hours later, when the creature tortured the Bishop to death right before the prince’s eyes, made him tremblingly glad he had not revealed the weakness of emotion, for what advantage might such a being take?

Lucifer, he could very well be Lucifer himself. Hermenegild glanced back again, thinking of how this creature must have handled and invaded his unconscious body to heal him. Terrifying to think of, and yet, having known such brutality now… to be cared for and protected was… it was difficult not to be grateful and submissive. Passive. But until he knew for certain he was not in the hands of the very manifestation of darkness, he must be guarded. 

Surely, however, something so beautiful, capable of such tenderness could not be… then he recalled again the sight of Atilius cracking open the Bishop’s ribs to get at his heart. The intent, yet blank look on his face… Hermenegild was fairly sure the Bishop had been dead by that point, but… it was not a sight (or sound) he would ever forget.

Perhaps he should just run. He was free, he was clear. Gregory had nearly emptied the treasury to give his Prince every advantage in building a new life. He was decently dressed, but nothing about his clothing identified him as a member of the royal family. He had his sword. Already they were several hours from Hispalis, passing farms and forests, intermittently. 

The road wasn’t safe, he knew that. Bands of thieves were common, and an obviously wealthy man alone would be a target. But does one put his soul in the bloody hands of Lucifer himself to avoid parting with his gold to robbers?

Suddenly a surge of hot and cold fear went over the Prince, and he leaned forward over his mount’s neck and urged it to a full run. The horse stretched out its legs, bobbed its head, and galloped full speed down the road. He could hear Atilius’ mount galloping just behind; obviously this creature did not go to such trouble to save Hermenegild only to watch him gallop away on the road to Gades.

Leaning over further, he gave his mount all the lead he could.

Achilles smiled. He’d been wondering when his Hector would make a break for it. The nervous glances back had been fairly telling. He loosed the reins and gave chase, and for several miles the two barreled at breakneck speed down the smooth yellow road, trees flashing by them as they flew. The sun lowered before them.

Finally, his shoulders sagging in defeat, the prince drew in the reins and allowed his tiring mount to slow to a walk. Achilles slowed at his side and gave him a look of fond, mild reproof.

“Water?” he offered a skin.

Reluctantly, the prince took it and drank, and then passed it back. 

“There’s a villa ahead. Let’s turn in and ask for lodging for the night. I’ll do the talking,” Atilius said. 

Hermenegild nodded, avoiding eye contact.

“From now on, you are Hector, from Greece.” Achilles said with a little smile. Hermenegild gave him a cautious look. Achilles’ smile faded. “If you try to leave me, I will follow you, and I will find you.” He warned. “Do you understand?”

His prince lifted his chin proudly and refused to answer such a remark. But he understood it perfectly well indeed.

Hermenegild sat on his horse and watched Atilius on the veranda of the villa speaking first to the servant who had answered the door, and then to the homeowner himself. He watched as the blond gestured to himself, and spoke at length, spinning who knew what lies. And he offered gold, but the homeowner, a heavy fellow with long hair and rather impressive facial hair, held up both hands in clear rejection of taking money for hospitality to a gentleman in distress. Atilius bowed and spoke for a moment more, and then returned.

Atilius approached and said quietly. “We’re on the way to Gades to sail back to Ithaca for the funeral of your father. Oh, and you only speak Greek, so don’t respond to anything he says.”

Hermenegild looked away in irritation and then back at him. 

“I’ve told him you’re exhausted and grief-stricken. He’ll have the servants stable the horses, show us to our room, and send up food. I’m your man servant and stay with you at all times, because you cannot understand anyone but me.”

Achilles shot him a warning look. “Until we are in Gades, I do not want you to speak to anyone. Nodding and smiling is all you need to do. Do you understand? Nod and smile. Start now. Nod and smile at me.”

His Hector lowered his head and glared at him, exactly as Achilles expected. He smiled, and pulled his packs off of his horse. Then he held out a hand to his prince.

“Alright, come, down you come.”


	12. Gades

Gades, Achilles decided, was a perfectly good place to settle in for a while, and as he had done with Philip, he lodged his beloved with a gentleman of means while he searched for a villa to buy or rent. It wasn’t easy: families tended to stay in one place, and as the family grew, they would add on to the compound as needed. However, in Gades as in Apamea, it was not impossible to find a home whose last inhabitant had died recently, leaving offspring who had settled elsewhere for practical reasons and were happy to be paid in gold rather than maintain a residence in a part of the city they rarely visited.

In this case, Achilles was pleased—very pleased—to find that a gentleman of scholarly bent had died leaving an elegant and spacious villa in the hills, with an extensive library and servants still in residence. His only living offspring, a daughter, had married a landowner’s son who lived outside of town. The son-in-law, operating through a series of advocates and notaries, sold the house and contents to one Lord Hector Philip Victorius (or so he was told, and the paperwork recorded).

In the days it took to arrange their domicile, Hermenegild did little besides eat and sleep, mostly because Achilles was nervous that his beloved might panic and bolt again. 

It wasn’t even romantic possessiveness, he told himself as he sat on the bed, stroking the short curls of his sleeping prince, and waiting for the notary’s runner to deliver the copies of the deeds. It was abject fear that Hermenegild would be identified, seized, returned to Hispalis, and summarily murdered. They were still in the province of King Liuvigild, and Achilles struggled with himself about the best course of action. 

He worried that trying to take his beloved too far from his home would increase the likelihood that the prince would panic and try to escape him. And his fear of losing his Hector was exacerbated by the certainty that letting him out of sight would lead to his doom. 

So until the villa was in readiness, Achilles regularly grabbed him despite his protests and struggles, and said, “Sleep.” Then he turned pebbles into gold in order to turn delay into efficiency.

Finally the day came when Achilles led his beloved through the side streets of Gades, up into the hills that marked the wealthy part of the city, and brought him to the villa with the enclosed courtyard, and mosaic tile floors of white and red in the entryway, and the colonnade that ran along all three wings of the home. He had even had the luck to find a domicile with a stable—a small one, with a patch of green for the horses. He made a mental note to ensure that they had at least one servant who could use a shovel and pitchfork.

His Hector entered the cool hall slowly, looking about rather suspiciously, as if he wondered for what nefarious purpose he had been brought to his place. 

Achilles was simply pleased to have servants again, even ones whose version of Latin was so corrupted, speaking to them was almost more difficult than getting the wine or lighting the candles himself. 

“What is this?” He asked one of them in the front hall, eyeing an ornate brass contraption that looked like a wrought gate, but stood alone on a heavy base with a large circle of polished brass suspended in the center of it.

“Master travel distant East bring dinner summon,” their new major-domo explained with pride.

Achilles stared at him without comprehension. 

“Strike time dine.” The servant added, for clarity.

Hermenegild picked up a small mallet that leaned against the contraption.

“It’s a gong,” he said shortly, and tapped the brass circle gently, sending out a deep ringing tone that seemed to shiver around its edges, and spread through the house like the auditory equivalent of the ripples in a pond widening from a pebble’s throw.

Transfixed, Achilles took the mallet from him and gave the gong a good swat. The yawning distress cry it made had the horrified urgency of the call from a curved horn signifying a coming attack.

Hermenegild took the mallet back quickly. “You don’t hit it that hard,” he told Achilles.

By the tipped head, and hot look with which the warrior regarded the gong, it was evident that his attentions to it were not over, but for now he left it alone, wanting to explore their new abode (with contents) further.

There were two bedroom suites, adjoined, and Achilles politely gave his Hector first choice of them. Their limited wardrobes were easily deposited, although Hermenegild’s conversation with the major-domo about tailors in the area promised a change coming soon.

Ultimately, the most interesting room to them both was the library. The elderly statesman had been a scholar indeed, and his library held both books and scrolls, and to Achilles’ unexpected fascination, maps. 

One particularly large map was affixed to the stone wall. He went and stared at it, dazzled to see the detail with which the sea was mapped out. _Mare Nostrum,_ it was labeled, and it drew him like a moth to the candle. In the days of Odysseus, even the Aegean was not well accounted for, and maps were rare and often wrong. But this… Achilles felt like a bird soaring over the sea and staring down at it. Here was Athens, labeled in Latin. Here was Carthage. Jerusalem. Rome. Constantinople. Antioch.

Achilles stared, realizing that on this map, he could pinpoint all the places he had found his Hector.

Hermenegild, meanwhile, was drawing books out carefully from the shelves, examining them, and then replacing them or laying them aside to peruse further. He glanced over at his… Deliverer? Protector? Captor? Atilius had grown so still he resembled an animal about to spring on its prey. Curious, Hermenegild came over to see what item could fascinate an enigma. Ah, a map.

“That’s a fine one.” The prince said, eyes searching it. “We are here,” he pointed, and the blond head turned, following his finger attentively. He turned to see Atilius looking quickly around for something to mark the map with. “Here, this little box… see the darts?”

Hermenegild stood back, puzzled. It was odd, the things his warrior seemed unfamiliar with. Remarks about the calendar were met with a blank stare, and watching him when they first entered the library, he noticed that Atilius was more likely to peruse scrolls than books. The saddles on the horses had also seemed to cause him a bit of irritation and adjustment, now that he thought on it.

But he could tell time and direction by the stars, and read Latin and Greek with ease.

Hermenegild returned to his pile of books, but kept a surreptitious eye on his companion. As he watched, Atilius put a dart in Hispalis, and then after a bit of perusal, another in the region of Dalmatia. Then a third in Edessa. Finally, he took a fourth and put it somewhat to the west of Constantinople. Then he simply stood back and looked from one to another repeatedly, as if he were searching for something.

The prince picked up the books he had found, mostly on the Doctrine of the Trinity, and turned to retreat to his rooms, but paused to turn back for a moment.

“How long are we staying here?”

Atilius blinked at him as if surprised at the question, and then the faintest shadow of a scowl, or a flash of concern—Hermenegild couldn’t quite identify it—passed across his tanned forehead. 

Finally the warrior sighed and fixed him with the sort of patient but stern look one might get from a father.

“This is where we live now,” Atilius told him gently, but firmly.

“But… what are we waiting for?” Hermenegild asked.

“We are not waiting for anything,” the warrior seemed as puzzled by the prince’s questions as the prince was puzzled by his answers.

“Why are we here?” Hermenegild pressed.

“Because you are safe here,” Atilius answered, as if it were obvious, but then seemed to reconsider, and added, “you are as safe here as you can be without completely leaving these climes, which I know from experience you will not want to do.”

“Experience?” Now the prince was not only puzzled, but suspicious.

Atilius gave him a slight smile and his gaze wandered over Hermenegild’s face and chest. The silence drew out.

“Who are you?” Hermenegild found himself wondering aloud.

Atilius’ smile grew a touch. “You always ask that.”

Not knowing exactly what to make of that reply, Hermenegild took his books, then, and withdrew to his rooms.


	13. Night

Achilles awoke in the night to hear his beloved’s voice, very faintly, from his bedroom. It was not possible to understand the words, if words they were, but instinctively, Achilles rose and lit a candle. He slipped his tunic on quickly and then padded silently on the cool stone floor to the adjoining bedroom.

His Hector was asleep, but not peacefully. Achilles touched his candle to the ones standing nearest, and then set it down and reached for Hector’s shoulder.

“No,” Hector muttered to someone in his nightmare, and moved his feet restlessly.

“Hector,” Achilles said, rubbing his arm soothingly. “Hector…”

Hermenegild awoke with a violent start, and threw his hands up defensively.

“It’s only me,” Achilles assured him.

His prince panted a bit, blinking at the candles. Achilles poured some water into a cup for him. “Here.”

Hermenegild pushed himself up on the bed a bit, and took the water, drinking it down quickly.

“More?”

“No,” he handed it back.

“What were you dreaming of?” Achilles poured a bit for himself.

His Hector shook his head silently.

Achilles drank, and then set the cup aside. “Do you want me to help you get back to sleep?” He offered.

The prince’s eyes widened. “No! I—I don’t like when you do that. When you do that, if I have an evil dream, I can’t awaken from it.”

Achilles’ eyes widened as well. He hadn’t even considered that, and now he cringed at the thought that his beloved might have spent weeks caught in horrifying dreams—and a man who has been tortured undoubtedly has horrifying dreams—while Achilles had calmly rode around Gades shopping for his body oils, and looking for a house.

“I didn’t know,” he said, eyes searching his Hector’s face.

Hermenegild finally looked at him, dark eyes large in the candlelight.

“Who are you? Why don’t you answer me when I ask you that?”

The warrior sighed and lay down beside his Hector without thinking. He had now spent two lifetimes—not as long as they should have been, but long enough to be habit-forming—with his lover at his side at night. This one was not ready for that, perhaps never would be, given what he had endured, and his mindset on matters that meant nothing to his warrior. Achilles had committed himself to sleeping apart and merely protecting this Hector for as long as necessary. But it was difficult, and he reverted to what was, for him, normalcy when he lay down at Hermenegild’s side.

“Who do you think I am?” He asked.

His prince shifted uneasily and did not answer.

“You obviously think I’m someone in particular, or the name Atilius would be good enough.” Achilles observed.

“I told you once I thought you were an angel,” Hermenegild said.

Achilles smiled. He was accustomed to being an angel now, and willing to continue the pleasing fiction he’d lived with Philip.

“The most beautiful angel of all, you said,” he couldn’t help reminding his beloved. Achilles was not entirely free from vanity.

“Are you?” His Hector whispered, wide-eyed, as if this was a very important question.

Achilles gave a slow blink. “Probably. What name do you want to call me?”

Hermenegild swallowed, eyes fastened on him. “Lucifer.” He breathed.

Achilles scowled. “No, that sounds like a woman’s name.”

Hermenegild blinked as if a spell had been broken, and for the first time a nervous smile came and went quickly. Achilles was always charmed by Hector’s smile, and rolled toward him, pleased.

“Try a different name,” he suggested.

Hermenegild sobered quickly and gave him a guarded look. “Ba’al-zebub.”

Achilles grimaced. “That’s a ridiculous name, pick another.”

His prince was now looking at him as if torn between wonder and fear.

“Satan,” he suggested, crimping up his eyebrows in that way he had.

“I remember that one… didn’t he have the legs of a goat?” Achilles asked, trying to remember the minutia of Philip’s worldview.

“What?? No…” Hermenegild said, almost smiling again.

“Do these look like goat’s legs to you?” He asked, lifting a muscular leg and flexing his ankle.

“No,” there was no doubt but that his beloved was smiling now, but in confusion.

“I am not Satan,” Achilles said firmly, lowering his leg and settling in more comfortably. He wanted very much to sleep with his Hector at his side, even if it must be chaste.

“Then who are you?” Hermenegild asked directly, and now also turned on his side to face him on his pillow. “Tell me who you really are.”

“Achilles,” he said grudgingly, and then with a grimace, added, “Yes, like in the poem.”

“What poem?” Hermenegild frowned.

Achilles thought of the map. They were rather far-flung this time. “Never mind.”

Hermenegild thought it over. “I know of no angels named Achilles. Are you an angel?”

Achilles admitted, finally, “I don’t think so. There were no angels where I come from.”

Hermenegild’s eyes grew larger, rather like the Captain of the Guard’s had. “Are you a pagan?”

“I might be,” Achilles said with a little smile. These distinctions meant nothing to him.

His Hector’s eyes went rather unseeing for a moment. “I’ve never met a pagan.”

_Now you’re in bed with one,_ Achilles almost said, but managed not to. His smirk said it all, but fortunately, his beloved was chasing another thought through his head.

“Where do your healing powers come from?”

“My mother,” Achilles said quietly, hoping his Hector would drift off to sleep without ordering him out.

“You had a mother?” His prince looked startled.

“Of course I had a mother. Do you think I came from a rock?” Achilles was a little offended.

“Who was your father?”

“King of Phthia,” Achilles answered honestly.

“Where is that?” 

“Far east. Far from here.”

Hermenegild considered that rather hopefully. His companion might be far less sinister than he had thought. His father, the king of some unknown region to the east, must be a believer, and had sent his son to save Hermenegild. But how would a believing father have a pagan son? But perhaps the whole kingdom was pagan, and the father alone had been converted. It would make sense for God to convert the king, and let the king lead his people—

“What were you dreaming of?” Achilles whispered.

Returning from his thoughts, the prince shook his head again, not wishing to talk about it.

“Can I stay, and wake you if it comes again?” He asked quietly. He could almost see his prince rebuilding the guarded, defensive walls in his mind.

But Hermenegild nodded slightly, looking toward the candles. “If you wish.”

“Is there anything more I can do? Do you still have pain anywhere?” Achilles wanted to caress his beloved, but his prince shook his head slightly.

Silence fell, and Achilles closed his eyes, glad to be able to catch the scent of his lover when he inhaled. After a while, he moved his hand so that the back of his fingers lay against Hector’s arm. That bit of contact soothed him, and eventually he slept.


	14. A Conversation

Achilles awoke in the morning to find his love had already arisen and vacated the bedroom. He stretched and rose, tended to his morning needs, and then began prowling about the house, searching for his Hector. The villa was essentially three long halls of rooms comprising three sides of a square, with the courtyard inside, and an inner colonnade along each section. A high wall against the road outside was the forth side, and the stables and green were behind the villa. The land went up hill and the property ended where the trees began.

Searching the dining room and the library, the courtyard and both bedrooms, the stables and green, Achilles did not find his Hector. Alarmed now, he went to the gong and gave it a good, ringing pound with the mallet. Immediately three male servants materialized from various part of the villa and came running on thin, slapping sandals with their eyes wide.

“Where is Lord Hector?” Achilles demanded, clearly agitated.

They looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Lord Hector leave?” Achilles tried, pointing at the front door.

They shook their heads again, although they seemed less certain.

“If Lord Hector leave, you tell me fast!” Achilles said, simplifying as much as possible into their peculiar, Latin-based patois.

They looked at one another again, now seeming uneasy. One asked him something, and he was able to make out the word _criminal,_ but little else.

Suddenly, Hermenegild appeared in the colonnade from Achilles knew not where, and came into the large entryway. He was dressed in a simple white robe that was fixed at one shoulder. 

The prince regarded him for a moment, and then spoke calmly to the servants in their own patois. He turned coldly to Achilles and said, “I’ve explained to them that I am your prisoner here, and they are to notify you if I attempt to leave. Will that content you?”

Achilles dropped the mallet and his shoulders relaxed a bit. “You are not a prisoner.”

“Then I can leave?” Hermenegild asked rhetorically.

“No,” Achilles told him immediately, eyes burning blue.

“I thought not,” his prince said drily, and retreated back the way he had come. Achilles followed him. The servants glanced at each other with looks that communicated the awareness of a new intrigue for their viewing pleasure, and sank back into their duties.

“Where were you?” Achilles asked, scowling.

“In the chapel,” his Hector said, and showed him a doorway that led into a small room that Achilles had not taken much note of before. In it was a cross on the wall, a window with alabaster in the glass, and several of the books that Hermenegild had taken from the library. There was a wooden bench seated before the cross, with cushions on it, and an altar. Many of the features were familiar to Achilles from his years with Philip, and he nodded and then turned away.

“You have no interest in Jesus,” Hermenegild commented, dark eyes serious in the pure pallor of his face.

“No,” Achilles admitted, “but I have an interest in breakfast. Come.”

His prince gave an involuntary scoff of disbelief at the warrior’s dismissive attitude.

Achilles retraced his footsteps and hit the gong again. Its moan through the house brought the servants pattering back quickly.

“Food.” Achilles explained, pointing toward the dining room. 

His Hector was right behind him. “Stop hitting the gong; that is for announcing dinner. The bell over there on the ledge, see that bell? That is for summoning the major-domo.”

Achilles gave the little tinkly bell a slight sneer of disfavor, and then said to his prince, “Tell them I want eggs, meat, cheese, and fruit in the dining room.”

Hermenegild crossed his arms over his chest and gave Achilles a stern look. “You tell them.”

Achilles turned back to the major-domo. “Eggs. Meat. Cheese. Fruit. There. Now. Go.” He hit the gong again for good measure. The servants grinned and headed for the kitchen. 

Hermenegild snatched the mallet from him. “You. Stop. That. Now.”

Achilles smiled at him and padded away to the dining room to wait for his food. Irritating Hermenegild was every bit as satisfying as irritating Hector had been.

The dinner table was long, and Achilles sat near the center, afraid that if he sat at one end, his Hector would sit at the opposite. Hector sat at the end nearest him, and the servants were hasty with fruit, cheese, and bread to keep the blond savage from hitting the gong while the meat and eggs were prepared.

“What do we do now?” The prince asked his captor, watching him tear into the bread and cheese.

“What do you do, now that you are dead, and a martyr?” Achilles asked him. “What would you like to do?”

“I would like to be free to come and go.”

Achilles shot him a look. “I understand that at one point you raised an army against your father. You wouldn’t be thinking of returning from the dead to try it again, would you?”

“No,” Hermenegild said, eyes downcast. Knowing his own father had signed a writ allowing him to be tortured and killed was sobering. His own aspirations had been to convert the king, not kill him.

“Then why go anywhere?” Achilles asked him.

“Because I don’t know why you saved me, “ the prince said.

Achilles sat back, chewing, and then swallowed with some difficulty. “Are you saying you wish I had not?” His stomach felt suddenly heavy.

“I’m saying I wish I knew why.”

The warrior found himself unwilling to try to explain again. The further he traveled through time and place to find his Hector, and the more powerful he himself seemed to become, the greater grew the distance between what his beloved understood of the world, and what Achilles could explain. He sensed that repeating patterns and constellations meant as little to Hermenegild as the details of the Hebrew gods meant to him.

“What does it matter?” Achilles finally said rather gruffly. “I saved you because I wanted to.”

“And now you’ll do what with me?” Hermenegild looked steadily at him.

“Feed you, for a start,” Achilles said, his eyes running over his Hector’s neck and arms. He looked as though the muscles were strong, but the flesh over them too thin. He pushed a bit of bread and cheese on a plate towards Hermenegild.

“You know, the Bishop wasn’t cruel at the beginning.” The prince told him unexpectedly, his face revealing nothing. “He tried to reason with me—that is how he put it, that he was reasoning with me—and I had clothes, and blankets, and was well-fed, at first. I had paper and quills, books…”

Achilles stopped eating and listened.

“It was only when he could not bend me to his will by kindness and insinuating words that he grew more forceful. The books went first, then the paper and quills. Then the clothing. Then, finally, men started coming with tools.”

Hermenegild stopped talking and looked at him, waiting.

Achilles looked over the food on the table. “And you believe I will do the same.”

“It would help if I knew exactly what you want from me,” the prince said patiently, but there was an edge to his voice. Both his hands were unmoving on the table. 

The warrior felt an ache in his chest._ I want to keep you safe. I want to adore you. I want you to let me._ None of these things seemed like something he could or should say to the exiled Prince Hermenegild.

“Let me train you to use weapons, so you can defend yourself,” he suggested suddenly. “Once I know you can fight, I will…” Set him free? No. Leave him and go? No. 

“You will what?” The prince asked him calmly, and his lips were tight.

Achilles could not answer.

“I don’t need training,” Hermenegild said.

Achilles stirred, finally, to slice more cheese for his bread. “You obviously do or you wouldn’t have been captured.”

“I wasn’t taken in battle, I was taken from my bed!” The prince snapped, head lowering a bit.

“Nevertheless, you clearly cannot fight.”

“I certainly can.” Now there was a bit of a gleam in his Hector’s dark eyes, and Achilles was glad to see it.

“Not to mention, your god did nothing to help you,” the warrior added.

The gleam grew hotter. “God does what He does for His own reasons.”

“And from what I can see, he mostly does nothing. He didn’t save you.” Achilles swallowed another chunk of bread, wondering when the meat was coming.

“Perhaps He sent you to save me,” Hermenegild countered.

“Then why run from me?” Achilles shot back impatiently.

Silence fell. One of the servants brought the meat in on a platter, his brown eyes looking back and forth between his barbaric blond Lord and his handsome, pale, dark-haired Lord, both of whom seemed frozen in tense attitudes, staring at one another.

“Eat,” Achilles told him finally, turning to the platter.

“Would you accept a challenge from me?” His Hector said suddenly. 

Achilles looked at him the way a large, tired dog would look at a bold kitten.

“With swords. If I win, you release me to do as I see fit. If you win…” Hermenegild hesitated.

Achilles raised his eyebrows interestedly.

“…I will do as you say in all things. I will submit to your will entirely.” The prince looked at him. “I will be… humble.” The corners of his lips deepened with distaste even as he said it.

Achilles looked back at the platter of meat. He was quite certain he understood what the prince had just offered, and equally certain that it was a sacrifice he hoped not to have to make. 

So. All Achilles had to do was show his prowess to his beloved, and reclaim his Hector in his bed… but a Hector who did not love him, and who found the very acts Achilles longed for to be nothing but a punishment and a humiliation.

It also occurred to him that in offering this, the prince knew quite well that his warrior wanted him. He could see it in every longing gaze, and was willing to dangle it like a prize. But he expected not to have to give it, only to offer it, deny it, and then walk out.

“I am beginning to understand how you make people so angry,” Achilles said quietly.

Hermenegild said nothing.

“Why would you make this offer? You’re half-starved, and you’ve seen what I can do.”

“I’m not without skills,” the prince informed him, eyes widening in challenge. 

“You want a sign from your god,” Achilles realized suddenly. “If he wants you to escape me, he’ll help you win this little joust… I’m guessing you never tested him against the Bishop in this way.”

Finally, his Hector reached for some meat. “But I did. We simply did not use swords. And I was winning.”

Achilles stared at him. “Was that what sustained you? This belief that by enduring his tortures and going to your death, that you were victorious?” He threw his bread down on the plate. “You are mad. You are truly mad!”

Now it was Hermenegild who was eating serenely while Achilles regarded him with bewilderment.

“Is there nothing you would die for?” His prince asked him.

Achilles sat back in his chair. It seemed that he and Hector had switched positions over the years, and the warrior was not sure how or when it had happened, or why. But suddenly, it was he who wanted to tell his prince how foolish he was to give up the simple happiness of a life lived with one’s beloved… but he was not beloved by Hermenegild.

And of course, there was something Achilles would die for. One thing. And it was sitting at this table. And he couldn’t tell his prince anything about it.

“Very well,” Achilles finally said, blue eyes cool upon his beloved. “When would you like to undertake this foolish test of our respective gods?”

“When we finish eating, I will pray for a while. Then I will be ready.”

“We don’t have any blunted swords.”

“We’ll use real ones,” the prince said calmly.

Achilles tipped his head and just looked at his Hector, at the beauty of his dark curls, the sweep of his neck leading to his shoulders, one of which was bared by his Roman robe. He looked at the defined, pale arms. 

“I assume this is not a fight to the death, as you’ve offered to be _humble_,” Achilles finally said.

“We’ll fight until one of us admits defeat,” his Hector said.

“With real swords. I saved your life and now you want to take a sword to me.” Achilles commented.

“No,” Hermenegild suddenly slammed his food down in the first display of temper Achilles had seen. “I want you to release me!”

“Absolutely not,” Achilles snapped back. “Particularly now that I can see that you are as mad as a cinnabar miner.”

Now his prince was rising from the table. “You either release me, or you crush me.” He said steadily. “Those are your choices. Those are the choices I gave the Bishop, and those are the choices I give you. Prepare yourself. We will meet on the green in one hour with real swords, and if you do not wish to be injured, you will have every _opportunity_ to admit defeat.”

Hermenegild left the dining room and Achilles sat stunned at the table.


	15. Opportunity

Hermenegild knelt in the chapel, the sweat on his body slowly cooling. In his mind, he addressed his God. 

_One of you must take control of my course, Lord. If you will not, he will. I don’t have the will to resist any more demands upon me. I beg your forgiveness for my weakness, but I have exhausted all my strength in your defense. _

_I would have gone uncomplaining to my grave, but I am befuddled now. In the tower, all seemed clear. My duty was clear. The Declaration was before me, and to resist it was my duty. _

_But then he came, and I thought he came from you. Then I thought he came from Satan. Now I don’t know anything anymore, and I won’t know until you show me. Show me my way: make him set me free, or give me to him entirely, but please, do not leave me in confusion any longer. I can bear anything but that._

_If he is evil, give me the strength to stand against him as you did against the Bishop. If I cannot stand, I must take this as my sign. Please! I cannot find my own way now._

Achilles was in the library, staring at the map, but his eyes had gone sightless, and in his own way he was praying too.

_Why these patterns? Why these hideous patterns? Why must he make a sacrifice of himself again and again and again? And this one is mad! This one is broken. Should I have left him? Would it have satisfied him? Would that have ended it? _

_What was it my mother said, that I was fated to kill Hector and die myself in Troy? That love changed my destiny? What if it was not supposed to? Victor said it was I who was caught—and then he died, and I am still caught. _

_What if I cheated my destiny and now it is trying to reassert itself? Are the gods angry that I did not kill Hector? Am I expected to kill my love? Is that how to end this? Kill him and die, and it ends?_

His breathing stopped for a long moment. Then he inhaled deeply.

_Well, I won’t do it, _he vowed stubbornly, eyes refocusing on the map._ I’ll defeat him, I’ll keep him, I’ll protect him, and when he dies, I will find the next one and we will do it again. We’ll do it again and again until it is destiny who is exhausted with us. _

With that, he took up his sword and shield, and went to the green to await his Hector.

At the most southerly part of the green was a large, spreading maple tree, and the horses had apparently spent the previous day cropping down the grass. Achilles looked around at length, determined that whatever happened, neither he nor his Hector would end up in a pile of horse feces.

Shortly, his prince emerged from the villa, having changed into a tunic with long, loose pants beneath it, and sandals. He came forward calmly, with his even steps, and his head set on his neck so perfectly steady, neither proudly high nor menacingly low. His sword and shield were hand.

_Here we are again,_ Achilles thought bleakly. _Perhaps I should let him kill me. What would destiny make of that?_ But he doubted his body would allow it to happen.

Hermenegild came to stand before him, and tipped his head forward slightly, giving him that same look he had outside the wall of Troy._ I’ve seen this moment in my dreams. _

“Will you let me go? Or do we fight?”

“If we fight, and I win, do you swear to uphold your end? You issued a challenge, you made an offer. This is a pact. Will you stand by it?”

“I swear on the Cross,” Hermenegild said, and inhaled deeply. “Do you?”

“I have nothing to swear on,” said Achilles, “but I do swear,” his eyes were serious.

The prince nodded, accepting this.

“Then we fight,” Achilles said, blue eyes intent, and planted his feet.

They began slowly, circling one another, occasionally swinging more as gesture than threat, each attempting to suss out the other’s capabilities in advance. Achilles was tasked with the double burden of protecting himself while exhausting his Hector without hurting him. He had done it once before, but it was all so different then! Then, he’d had no idea of the value of what he was risking. Now, he was certain that if he hurt his Hector, he himself would bleed. 

Moreover, Hector of Troy had felt no rage against him, had indeed felt a touch of guilt over the death of Patroclus. He had been like hard wood, polished smooth, but warm and beautiful. This Hector had a soul as bright and hard as his blade. Or so it seemed.

Achilles pressed in and was immediately met with speed and prowess. The prince’s arm moved quickly, and he knew how to use a strong wrist to make the blade flash through the air. After a few dances forward and back, Achilles had to admit: Hermenegild could indeed fight. He was every bit as skilled as Hector had been, and Roman swords were not as heavy as those they’d fought with so long ago. His prince moved with agility and strength. 

They circled each other on the soft grass beneath the sheltering branches of the massive tree. 

Twice, the prince lunged with all apparent intent of skewering his rival, and Achilles’ body twisted of its own accord, letting the blade slip past him.

After several minutes of polite sparring, Achilles finally decided to let his own skills be seen. He sped up his attacks and forced Hermenegild to block and block until he had no opportunity to strike. His sword flashed as he wove a pattern of silver around his prince, who blocked adeptly for some time before beginning to lag. 

Achilles swept his sword under the shield, turning it at the last second so the flat blade slapped hard against Hermenegild’s hip. Then he whipped it around and brought it singing around to slap the other side to his prince’s neck. Had he used the edge, he’d have beheaded his target, who suddenly stumbled back and lowered his sword and shield, panting.

The warrior waited, poised to begin again, his breathing barely elevated.

Hermenegild stared at him, sword hanging down, and then narrowed his startled eyes. “I remember you.” He murmured to himself, confusedly.

Achilles lowered his sword immediately. “What?” He hardly dared hope he’d understood rightly.

His prince blinked several times and shook his head as if bewildered. “Nothing. Come,” and lifted his sword again.

Now Achilles was angry. He would peel off this Hermenegild and find what was underneath. He attacked with force now, face settled and dark, battering down every parry with ever increasing violence. His blows sent frightening vibrations through the metal and up the prince’s arm, causing his hand to go numb. 

When Hermenegild could no longer control his sword arm, Achilles began slamming his shield against the prince’s over and over until he fell backward into the grass. Dropping his sword, Hermenegild rolled over to struggle quickly up to his knees. 

Achilles threw his own sword aside, and grabbed the fallen sword, throwing that far from them as well. He then used his shield as a bludgeon, slamming it on Hector’s as his prince huddled behind it, trying to hold it up with both arms.

“I yield! I yield!” Hermenegild finally cried out, and Achilles stopped, breathing heavily not with exertion but with emotion.

“Do you?” He said seriously, blue eyes piercing, his hair falling forward as he loomed over his prince, who looked up at him in fear, as if Achilles might not be able to stop.

“I do. I surrender. You have beaten me.” Hermenegild gasped, but his eyes were just as steady and unfathomable as they had ever been.

“You said I had to crush you,” Achilles reminded him, still inexplicably furious.

His prince released his shield and let it fall flat beside him, panting. “You have,” he said, bringing both shaking hands up to Achilles’ hips, and bowing his head to rest it on the warrior’s knee. “I am crushed. I have no resistance left. I am defeated.”

Finally calming somewhat, Achilles put his hand in the dark curls, caressing him. The warrior dropped his shield and gazed around them for a moment. Then he looked over to see all three servants watching avidly from behind the villa, seated on wooden crates. One was eating grapes. 

Achilles pointed menacingly at them, and they jumped up and hurried back inside the villa. He sighed and then sat down next to his beloved in the soft, green grass, now well-trampled from their struggle.

His prince remained on his knees, head bowed, and Achilles simply took him in his arms and rolled him over onto his back. He fell passively, arms out, as if to say _whatever you desire._ It was dangerously tempting, but Achilles was not a hot-blooded youth any more. He lay next to his Hector, tenderly brushing his hair back from his damp forehead.

“What did you mean when you said you remembered me?” He asked.

His Hector looked at him blankly. 

“Never mind,” Achilles said. Then after a moment, he decided to begin exacting compliance. “So, you said you would obey me in all things.”

Hermenegild lay gazing up at him, eyes softer and less guarded than he had seen them yet. “Yes.”

_He’s truly all or nothing, _Achilles thought now, fingers tracing the ridge of the prince’s wide cheekbone.

“Tell me about your dreams,” he demanded. “Are they about what happened to you in the tower?”

The dark eyes closed for a moment, unhappily, and then opened again. “Sometimes.”

“Your feet?” Achilles asked.

Hermenegild nodded. 

“The whip?”

“Not as often, but yes.”

“And then there were other things,” Achilles said. “Who did them?”

Hermenegild shook his head slowly. “I don’t know who they were. There were two of them, and it was the last… the last attempt. It was the day before you came.”

Achilles fumed, his hand now petting his beloved’s arm and chest in a fruitless attempt to caress it all away.

“Does that still haunt your dreams?” He asked carefully.

“Not as much. It was painful and humiliating, and a shock that it would be suffered to be done to me. But my feet were far more… that is what I remember the most.”

“Do they still pain you?” Achilles asked softly, but the prince shook his head. “What else do you dream about?”

“Most often, I have a dream that I’ve had all my life, long before any of this. I dream that there’s a fire. Something I love is burning… a city or a building… it’s not always the same, but it’s burning and all I can do is stand there, or lie there, and watch it. Sometimes I can’t even see it, but I know it’s happening, and there’s nothing I can do.”

Achilles stared down at him, hand growing still. “You dream of that?”

“Yes.”

The warrior was reeling, and in his mind, he too could see Troy, could see the abbey, could see Salona… and were there more? Were there others? Something occurred to him.

“When you’re dreaming that, when you’re watching something burn, who is beside you? Who is close to you?”

Hector’s lips parted, and his eyes grew large, staring into his dream. “Someone… yes… there is someone… I cannot see him, but I feel him there, close to me… How did you know there is someone…?”

Achilles put his lips to his beloved’s ear, “How do you think I know??”

His prince looked into the blue eyes gazing down so lovingly at him. A spasm seemed to clutch at his chest, and tears stung his eyes. 

“Is it you? Is it you??” He breathed.

Achilles put his hand on his beloved’s cheek. “It’s always me.”


	16. Dinner

They lay together in the grass for a long while, faces close, hands in each other’s hair, until Achilles looked up to see that the servants were peeking at them again. 

“Alright,” he sighed. “Come.”

He helped his Hector up and they retrieved their swords and shields, and crossed the grass with vastly different outlooks and feelings than those with which they’d set out. The sun was high now.

They passed the gaping servants, who, now that Achilles looked at them, seemed to be a father and his two sons. He pointed his sword at them. “Horses! Food!”

They nodded hesitantly and turned, throwing pleading looks over their shoulders. His Hector paused and spoke to them.

“Ohhh… “ they said, and left more cheerfully.

Hector smiled, although he looked suddenly exhausted. “We almost had horse for dinner. You’d better let me do the talking from now on.”

Achilles took the weapons and laid them in an unobtrusive corner. “Go bathe and then lie down, sleep a bit,” he told his beloved, seeing the weary stoop of his shoulders.

“No, I don’t need—“ 

“You said you would obey me in everything,” Achilles reminded him instantly.

His Hector laughed reluctantly, a wondrous sight, although his eyes were drooping. “Oh, you are a tyrant.”

Achilles nodded. “You will soon see. Go now.”

When his Hector had retired, Achilles looked after him. There was a time he would have pounced instantly, but his beloved’s experiences in the tower stood before him like a monster between them. How could he do anything to him that could remind him of that horror?

_One issue at a time,_ he decided, and went to the library. There were history books in there, he was certain, and he had a mission. To discover what had happened to the Ovida who had murdered his Victor.

Achilles spent the afternoon hunting through the books and scrolls, determined to learn all he could about these patterns they were living through. He found nothing in his initial search about Ovida, but it was difficult to say exactly where to look. The sun had set and he’d lit candles when his Hector, refreshed from his nap, came to join him, carrying two chalices of wine.

“Have you been in here all day?” He asked.

“Mm,” Achilles affirmed, taking the wine.

“What are you looking for?”

“Something on the reign of Odoacer of Rome. What do you suppose this is?” Achilles hefted a large scroll that was thickly rolled but oddly short. 

Hector unrolled it. “It’s a timeline. A long one, look…. Take one end.”

They pulled it apart to see a series of skins, cut precisely and sewn into a long strip that stretched halfway across the library when fully extended.

“It has the Emperors of Rome on it,” Hector pointed out. “I only know Augustus and Hadrian, but here, let’s lay it on the floor.”

They piled books on the ends and Achilles was soon hunkered over it, hair hanging over his face, perilously close to the candle in his hand, searching for familiar names in the tiny, precise handwriting.

After a moment, his Hector leaned close and blew out the candle. Achilles reared back and stared at him in affront.

“It will still be here tomorrow, when it’s light. Come, let’s dine.” Hermenegild said.

“Am I the master here or you?” Achilles asked sternly.

“It’s time for dinner, which means someone needs to ring the gong,” his prince said temptingly.

Achilles rose quickly, eyes lighting up. 

“Try not to dent it,” Hermenegild said, watching him go.

At the dinner table, the prince looked at the wealth of lit candles. “It’s not the common practice to have so many candles lit at night. It’s as bright as daylight in here. Aren’t you worried about expense?”

“No,” Achilles said shortly, forgetting that Hermenegild had never seen his method of producing gold. “How many Emperors were there?”

Hermenegild shook his head. “Nearly one hundred, I believe. Why are you so interested?”

“I will tell you when I understand it myself,” Achilles said. “Why were you and your father such deadly enemies?”

The prince sank into silence, eyes distant.

“Did you argue about Jesus?” Achilles asked, and the prince shot him a look for referring to the Savior as casually as if he’d said, _Did you argue about money?_

“We disagreed about His nature, yes,” Hermenegild was not willing to try and explain it to a pagan.

Achilles thought about it, and then brightened. “Do you have a younger brother?”

“Yes.” His Hector looked puzzled.

“And your father prefers him.”

The prince decided to pay closer attention to his food.

Achilles watched him closely. “I don’t suppose your brother got locked in a tower.”

“No,” Hermenegild cut his meat neatly and ate a piece.

Something else occurred to Achilles. “Were you married?”

His Hector put his utensils down.

“Where is she now?” Achilles asked uneasily. 

“Safe, I believe. With the boy,” Hermenegild said softly, still looking at his plate.

_Another similarity, and another barrier between us,_ Achilles thought moodily. “Did you love her?”

The prince inhaled slowly, and then attended his food again. “I admired her strength. She was very young, but very stalwart in her faith. I hope she is rewarded for it, and life treats her kindly. But it has been my experience that…”

“Being stalwart in your faith doesn’t come with much reward,” Achilles guessed.

“Not in this life,” Hermenegild said. “So. Will we talk about how you are in my dreams, and why you came to save me, and how it is that you have such powers but know so little about the world we live in now, and about the religion that has ruled this land for hundreds of years?”

Achilles decided to try. “I come from a time before your religion. Before your Jesus.”

Hermenegild stiffened immediately. “Jesus has always existed.”

“I thought you said he was the Son of your God, doesn’t that mean he was born—“

To his surprise, his prince left his chair and took several steps away from the table.

“You’re an Arian!” He said, eyes burning black, brows straight and low above them.

“You said I was a pagan,” Achilles said, eating another bite slowly. “You’ll have to decide eventually.”

“This has all been deliberate! You are here to lead me from my faith.” Hermenegild stared at him for a moment and then turned and headed straight for the front door of the villa.

Achilles leapt up and grabbed him, dragging him back. Soon they were wrestling furiously on the cold stone floor, and at least one candelabra was tipped, allowing the candles to sputter out as their wax dripped to the stones.

Finally, Achilles exerted himself and held his beloved immobile. His Hector’s eyes were more terrified than he had ever seen them, which distressed him, but he held on anyway, until the struggling finally ceased.

“Whatever you believe,” Achilles told him firmly, “We made a pact, and you must honor it. You swore on the Cross. You swore on the Cross!” He knew from his years with Philip that this was rather a momentous item.

Hermenegild went limp with despair. 

“If you do not like my answers to your questions, do not ask any more questions,” Achilles advised. There was a lump in his throat as he added, “We do not have to speak at all, if everything I say convinces you that I am here to hurt you. I am not--” he found it difficult to speak at all for a moment. Finally, he swallowed and began again. “I am not here to do anything except protect you, and care for you. And I will never speak of your god, or my past again.”

His prince lay wrapped in the strongest arms he’d ever encountered and stared unseeingly at the floor.

“Do you agree to honor our pact? Will you keep your word? Or do I have to take you to some island you can never escape?” Achilles did not enjoy speaking to his prince this way, but he remembered very well holding Victor in his arms as the life left his body. He was not going to allow it to happen again.

He waited, making it clear that he would not release until Hermenegild had acknowledged his vow.

“Yes,” he finally whispered.

“Good,” Achilles slowly released him, and helped the shaken man to his feet. “We’ll say no more about it. “

_We’ll say no more about anything._


	17. Silence

Achilles turned the key in the lock of the front door, and put the chain it hung from back around his neck.

“When return shop food market ring bell,” he said to the father of the two servants, whose name, it turned out, was Simon.

Simon nodded, “Later tailor come Lord Hector,” he reminded him.

“Right. Remember, Lord Hector no leave without Lord Achilles.”

“Yes.”

He looked to see Hector standing in the colonnade, watching. His arms hung limp at his sides, and his brows were worried. But he said nothing.

Achilles said nothing as well, turning to go into the library. He’d passed yet another long, lonely night in his bed, ears straining to hear if his beloved had a bad dream that would give him the excuse to go padding to his rescue, but no.

Very well. He returned to his timeline, and lay on the floor with a quill, hunting up and down it. He had found Odoacer near the end, and Caracalla nearer the center. He saw that there were numbers for the years now, and the numbers apparently began with this Jesus. His fame had spread since the days of Philip, Achilles surmised. 

Now he was making a list of historical events he needed to research, possibly at the grand library of Hispalis if nothing here could be found.

He stopped to count the years between Caracalla and Odoacer. Then he’d compare it to— 

It occurred to him that he did not know what year this was, and he got to his feet intending to ask one of Simon’s boys, but hesitated. He would have to make sure his prince was not nearby. Achilles never knew what would set off his beloved’s fears, and his vow of silence had gotten easier as the days went by.

Achilles went looking for a servant, any servant, but they were nowhere in sight, so he went to the gong, intending to give it a good smack. That always brought everyone running. Just as he was preparing to do so, Hermenegild emerged from the chapel and saw him.

“No, no, don’t…” his prince came to him wearily. “What is it?”

Achilles hesitated, looking at him. He had ceased shaving and his whiskers were coming in very Hector-like. His curls had filled in since his haircut in the tower many weeks ago. He was more beautiful than ever. Achilles lowered his eyes, not wanting to make his prince uneasy, and decided to maintain his silence. He dropped the mallet and returned to the library. To his surprise, his prince followed him.

“What??” His Hector shouted at him. “Just tell me.”

Achilles sat back down on the floor before his timeline and gazed at him in stubborn silence. It was rather enjoyable, he suddenly realized, to be the one pursued and cajoled.

And he was tired of being feared by the one he loved. 

Hermenegild stood in the door of the library, watching the expressions pass over Achilles’ face. He realized suddenly that he did not like his captor’s silence.

“Just tell me what you want. I promise to remain calm,” he said.

There was silence for a moment.

“What year is this?” Achilles finally asked him.

“585,” the prince answered, mentally adding this to the list of strange things about Achilles.

The blond head nodded and the warrior bent over his timeline again, saying no more. His quill, however, was busy scratching. 

After a moment, Hermenegild returned to his quest of bringing candles from his bedroom to the chapel. There was an ache in his heart, and he was aware of a sudden feeling of loneliness that had not been present before. 

In the weeks since he had passed into the hands of Achilles, he had felt fear, anger, wonder, horror, gratitude, and… desire, he finally admitted. But now that the warrior had undertaken to be his silent, distant protector, the prince felt the isolation more completely than in his two months in the tower. 

In the tower, he had prayed constantly for the strength to fight the Bishop, and from his window, he could see the alabaster smeared windows of the Church. He could see the light in those windows from the candles at night, and know that the Bishop was praying too, for the strength to overcome him. 

The battle of the wills had kept him absorbed. Only when Hermenegild refused the Eucharist, and the Bishop finally understood he would not prevail, and grew to hate him, did the prince know fear and pain. And even the fear and pain kept him focused on his duty. He was convinced of the importance of his ordeal. He could hear the women chanting for him at the base of the tower every morning and every evening. 

It wasn’t that he wished he were back in the tower, because he certainly did not. He was no masochist, and the breaking of his feet was the most agonizing, horrifying experience in his life. The other things that had happened were paltry in comparison.

Never would he forget the day the door opened, and the beautiful, mysterious man with the long blond hair had entered, eyes fixed on him with some intense emotion he could not identify. He’d braced himself for more pain and this man had sat down at his side, silently, and so gently touched his feet. 

Hermenegild had not understood at first that this angel was actually healing him. He felt the pain recede and thought he must have some medical knowledge, or must have some ointment on his hands that he was using. Perhaps just pushing in the right spots put the bones right. Only later had he stared down… it was hard to tell with the blood still on them… but they were clearly improved.

The concern, the gentleness, the quiet outrage, the longing in the angel’s face had done much to heal the wounds of Hermenegild’s heart.

Only later had he witnessed how terrifying the wrath of such a being could be.

And then the fight out under the maple tree. At first he’d felt he was holding his own. He did not want to hurt Achilles, even if he were really Lucifer himself. But he trusted that the fight would show him the true nature of the man. And it did. He was a powerhouse the likes of which Hermenegild did not know existed. He knew it the minute Achilles had decided not to hold back any longer. 

The prince sat on his bed now and realized he even missed when Achilles came in, held him down, and said, “Sleep.” Even that panic of feeling himself drawn under like a current pulling him into darkness… it made him feel as though he was in the power of something stronger. Something benevolent. Now he didn’t sleep well at all, and when he did, he dreamt of fire burning his kingdom. 

And yes, Achilles was there now, in his dreams. Close, and very visible. He was amazed he’d never realized it before.

Forgetting the candles, he got up and went out to pace about the courtyard. He did not wish he was back in the tower, in pain and in fear, but he did rather wish that an executioner had come and put an end to it all with one quick blow. He wished he’d died when he still had untroubled faith, and felt no confusion, and had not met Achilles.


	18. Research

Achilles dragged a cot out onto the colonnade so he could read in comfort by daylight. The servants simply stepped around him, having adjusted to their eccentric blond Lord. The dark-haired one was much more conventional, and spoke their language, and knew the local customs. The blond was rather an animal, but Simon and the boys liked him. He occasionally played a little game with them called Guess Which Hand the Gold Pebble Is In. That was a favorite.

Now he was curled on a cot in the shade, scowling over a book on the reign of Caracalla.

It seemed that Caracalla had died shortly after the murder of King Abgar. Just as Agamemnon had—or so the fisherman had once told him—after the murder of Priam. Achilles still yearned to discover the fate of Ovida, and the year, according to this calendar, of the fall of Troy. 

After a bit, he dropped that book and picked up another, on Alexander the Great. Because according to his own personal timeline Achilles was building, there was a suspiciously long period between Hector of Troy and Philip of Edessa, whereas Victor of Salona, and Hermenegild of Hispalis followed close upon each other. 

There must have been at least one Hector that the sea-god didn’t take him to. If the patterns of the numbers were consistent, he would have died around 300BC.

Achilles rolled over on his cot and kept reading. He hoped the numbers were consistent. For a brief and hair-raising moment, a day earlier, he had been searching through history for a young man in his early 30s, from a good family, embroiled in a dispute over a kingdom, sacrificed or endangered by his own father… and had the horrible thought that this Jesus might be one of his Hectors. 

Having read what happened to him, Achilles nearly bashed his own brains out on the floor of the library. Fortunately, he was lying on the well-padded rug at the time. 

When he finally calmed enough to tremblingly add Jesus on his timeline, and put a dart in Jerusalem, he stared at it for a long time. Location-wise, it seemed very likely. Horribly likely. But time… the number of years… maybe not. Probably not. Hopefully not. He shivered and rubbed the name out, calculated the numbers and decided no, no, certainly not. 

Achilles couldn’t bear the thought. No, looking at how the space between the numbers was growing shorter, he had decided Alexander the Great—

“May I join you?” 

He looked up to see his prince, looking rather wan. His heart sped up a touch, but he simply moved over and made a place on the cot. Hermenegild lay down next to him and exhaled slowly. 

Achilles put his book aside and regarded him silently, but with all the adoration that still lived, undamaged, under his ribs and in his throat.

His Hector’s profile never failed to move him. The nose had just the slightest hint of the hawk to its curve, and was finely made. The lower lip dipped in deep before the chin. His neck was a perfect column.

Then the prince rolled his head toward Achilles, and it was evident how exhausted he was.

“Are you not sleeping?” Achilles finally asked.

His Hector shook his head slightly.

“Is it the bad dreams?” Achilles ventured.

“I just can’t sleep.” Hermenegild whispered. The skin was dark around his long, deep set eyes.

“Do you want me to help?”

The prince looked bleakly at him for a moment, and then said, “May I just lay here with you for a while, as you read?”

“Of course,” Achilles whispered back, and watched his beloved close his eyes. After a moment, his Hector moved his arm closer and let it rest against the warrior’s hip.

Achilles’ heart gave a thud of longing, unexpectedly, at the touch. He had to close his eyes for a moment, brows contracted in a sort of cramp of the mind. Finally he gave up on thinking of likely candidates during the reign of Alexander the Great, and let himself lay on the cot in the shade. His beloved was at his side, and they were touching. 

When he woke, it was deep twilight and the shimmering note of the gong was just dying away. He turned to see his beloved asleep at his side, and for a moment, had a stab of fright at how still he looked. Achilles put a hand to his Hector’s neck, but it was warm, and the next moment, his prince was sniffing and blinking.

“I think Simon decided it was time we woke up.” Achilles ventured.

“Mm,” his Hector obviously was in no hurry to move. The night air was cool, and they were comfortable.

The nearest door opened and Simon waved at them to come in.

“Wake! Come! Bugs!”

They both peered at him, half asleep and puzzled.

“Bugs!” Simon insisted. Then he pointed.

They turned to see hundreds of tiny lights rising up from the grass, bobbing in the air, winking out and on again. Charmed, they both lay watching in silence. Like little candles, they rose and fell, more than they could count. The entire courtyard seemed like a night sky full of bright, floating, dancing stars. Neither of them moved, their eyes going from one flickering light to another as the smiles grew on their lips.

The gong sounded again. The door opened again.

“Bugs!” Simon repeated, clearly distressed.

Both men started chuckling. Achilles ran his hand over his beloved’s arm and then rose, pulling him up. They went inside the villa, and Simon let out a stream of patois that sent his sons out to gather up the abandoned books and sheets. 

They dined quietly, being both heavy from sleep, and then took wine into the library, where Achilles lit every candle in the room.

Hermenegild looked around. It had been some days since he’d entered the library. It seemed as if the villa were being portioned off into territories, and the library was Achilles’ as the chapel was Hermenegild’s. But now he was here, and could see his protector had been at work. The timeline was on the wall, with notations and equations written on it. The map was marked up with pathways and dates. The books had been sorted into piles. There was a pillow on the floor.

“Have you been sleeping in here?” He asked.

“No.” Achilles said rather defensively. “Not … all night.”

Hermenegild looked at the map and timeline. “Will you tell me what you are searching for?”

Achilles grew somber. “Better if I don’t.”

His prince lowered his head. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” It wasn’t an accusation, just a despondent observation.

“No, no,” Achilles said, drawing his hand down his beloved’s arm soothingly. “No, I just think you’re mad.”

Hermenegild smiled unwillingly. “That is not better,” he said, looking at Achilles for a long moment.

They drank their wine in sips, each very aware of the other. 

“Well, if you won’t tell me what you’re looking for, may I at least ask if the locations and the dates are for the same thing?”

Achilles nodded cautiously.

“Is there any pattern so far?” His Hector asked.

The warrior looked at the timeline. “There might be, in time, but the locations seem random. And I don’t know if I have all the… points.”

His prince looked down again for a moment and then said, “I slept well next to you.” Then he turned his eyes directly on Achilles again. “I had no bad dreams.”

“Do you want to sleep next to me tonight?” Achilles offered hopefully.

His prince nodded, casting his eyes modestly down once more.

“Let us go then,” Achilles found himself making in sudden haste for the door.

Hector hesitated. “Aren’t you going to put out the candles?” 

Achilles returned and doused the candles one by one until the last was in his hand, and they left the library to walk quietly across the cool stone floor to Achilles’ room.

Behind him, he heard Hermenegild observe drily, “I already dream of things on fire, and you like to doze off in a room full of scrolls and candles.”

“I won’t anymore,” Achilles promised, and opened the door to his room invitingly, looking back at his prince. “Or do you want your room?” the warrior asked.

“No, yours,” Hermenegild said, and didn’t explain why, but in his head he felt that Achilles’ room would smell like him. He wanted, suddenly, to be surrounded with the scent of his surprisingly patient protector.

Achilles put the candle down and almost whipped off his tunic out of habit, but halted himself, thinking that Hermenegild was probably not yet ready for Fully Naked Pagan. 

They crawled into the bed and lay invitingly near one another. Achilles could almost feel Hector’s weariness. Finally, he reached over and put his hand on the other’s arm. Hector turned his face toward him and moved a leg over to lay it against his.

They lay peacefully touching for a long moment, eyes half-closed in the dark, almost able to hear one another breathing.

“Bugs!” Achilles whispered suddenly, and they both started laughing silently in the dark, like boys. 

“Bugs!” Hermenegild agreed, and they chuckled for a bit more. Eventually, they fell asleep, still smiling slightly.


	19. An Outing

Achilles sank down into the tub and dunked his head in the water, letting his long blond hair float around him. Today he was going to take his beloved on an outing. He wasn’t nervous, exactly, but there was no doubt he liked it best when his Hector was locked up where no one could see him except for his adoring captor. But—he came up with a splash—the villa’s library provided no books about the region of Dalmatia in the 5th century, and Achilles was hungry to know for certain that Ovida had died shortly after Odoacer entered Salona. If the pattern held, then yes, he did.

His Hector needed an outing, too, he was certain. They had been nearly a month in the villa now, and his chaste protection had certainly won him the prince’s trust. His beloved had no idea, of course, how many nights he slept peacefully as his warrior brooded over him hungrily. The Achilles that had tied up the terrified, confused Hector and molested him with sensuous abandon could not do such things to the traumatized Hermenegild. So he ached in silence, and his darling slept with his dark curls on Achilles’ pillow. 

The sacrifice of frustrated lust was at least partially repaid, however, in the increasing trust and openness of his prince’s gaze when he was awake. Thus, Achilles felt certain he could take the prince on a canter through the hills, down to Gades, and then to the public library. While the Visigoths did not seem to have the same interest in public works that the Romans did, Achilles was confident that there was a library, and it still stood. He was also fairly confident that his prince wouldn’t suddenly gallop off while his captor was picking through the history section.

What Achilles was less certain of was whether Prince Hermenegild might be recognized. His likeness existed in some places, undoubtedly. Now that he was a martyr, he might be even more of a public figure than he had been as his father’s local regent. It would only take one person to gasp, “Your Majesty!” Achilles wondered if the Bishop’s head was rotted enough by now to be unrecognizable. He decided to take his sword and knife on their outing.

Despite his unease, once they were on their eager horses, trotting downhill on the winding road side by side, Achilles was glad he’d suggested it. The sun dried his hair, and reflected off his prince’s shining curls, and the blue sea in the distance sparkled. The air was fresh, and his Hector looked happy in his blue tunic trimmed with gold over the pants and boots that the locals wore. His pale, muscular arms were bare, and his cape was red and draped gracefully over the horse’s haunches. 

Hermenegild was perhaps too handsome and well dressed to escape notice. But at his side was his faithful manservant, similarly attired, but in simple gray with no trim, and plenty of weaponry. Achilles intended to make certain no one laid a finger on his prince.

Having little to go on but Simon’s description of “Town Center Buildings Very Big Probably Books Past Market Near Statue,” they followed the road in companionable silence. As Achilles’ eyes traversed the bright countryside, he saw something that made him pull up his horse for a moment. It was a field of yellow flowers. 

“What is it?” Hermenegild brought his mount back to him.

Achilles gestured to the flowers, “Do they remind you of anything?”

The prince looked at them. “No.”

Achilles nodded, and flicked the reins to continue on. When he and Hector-as-Aeneas had founded their New Ilium on a hill, there were patches of these flowers about the countryside, and he often came into his king’s suite to find him on the balcony, staring down at them. They came to stand as a reminder of Priam and Paris, and Troy. But clearly it was not a detail that featured in Hermenegild’s dreams.

Once they were in the busy part of town, Achilles found himself crowding close to his prince and eyeing everyone who walked by. Now he was convinced that this was a mistake. He had always found his prince more beautiful than sunshine, but he had forgotten that other people found him plenty appealing as well, and they seemed to attract attention wherever they went. The warrior himself came in for his share of it, but that did not disturb him. He was accustomed to being admired (and in fact a little offended when someone did not take a second look). But Hermenegild must not be recognized.

Unfortunately, the local version of Latin was well evolved on its separate path, and Achilles’ attempts to find the library were reminiscent of his efforts to find a map in Edessa. It wasn’t that they couldn’t understand “Big Building Many Books?” It was that Achilles couldn’t understand their replies if they featured anything more than a pointing finger and the word “columns.”

“You could just let me do it,” his prince breathed.

“No, you speak nothing but Greek. You are the handsome Greek, your father owns Ithaca,” Achilles muttered, and then raised his voice and in Greek promised his Lordship that he would find the library soon. He was determined that if they were to become a fixture in Gades, his prince would be known as The Lost Greek, and not the Miraculously Restored Visigoth Prince Who Needs to be Beheaded Again.

At last, they located the library, and paid a boy to watch their horses while they browsed.

Soon, Achilles was lost in the hunt for books on the reign of Odoacer, or the history of Dalmatia. At first he was patient and methodical, but libraries were still not his natural habitat. Eventually, his increasingly perturbed search amongst the shelves garnered him the attentions of the scribe who seemed to have charge of the library. He was a well-educated old soul who, to the warrior’s relief, spoke Greek fairly well.

“Ah, yes, the murder of Julius Nepos! That is a distant tale, my Lord, your interests are esoteric indeed. Here it is… yes, his killers were executed by Odoacer. Well, Count Ovida, it says… yes, here. His accomplice is not mentioned further, but Ovida, definitely. Within months. Yes, is good. You are pleased? Well. Is there another topic? Yes? Ancient Troy? Yes! Yes, here, Homer, and Virgil as well, for the founding of Rome by Aeneas if you are interested. Aeneas. Yes, Aeneas. Oh long ago. He escaped Troy, you know. Well, they say. Oh, before Romulus and Remus, yes, long before. Just the very birth of Rome, it was Aeneas. Yes, here is the Virgil. Well, no, you cannot take it from the library, but… oh my, what a… large gold pebble that is. Perhaps no one will mind. And then Alexander the Great, yes, there are many books about him. But we don’t sell… we don’t _normally_ sell them, but I see you are a patron of fine literature. You have quite a collection of gold pebbles, I see! That’s a fine thing. Your friend? Oh, he wandered off some time ago. Yes, outside. No, I don’t know, but he’s very easy to spot, so…oh well, good-bye. Do come back—“ 

Achilles shot from the library, the two books shoved into his leather purse, eyes wide, and one hand on his sword. Hermenegild was nowhere in sight, and Achilles stood on the steps, feet braced wide apart, and panted with agitation. After a moment, he saw that both horses were still placidly flicking their tails with the boy on the edge of the street. 

Calming himself, the warrior went to the boy and asked him, “Where is My Greek Lord?”

The boy pointed across the street at a large structure that had all the familiar features of a house of worship, and Achilles inhaled deeply through his nostrils, crossed the street, and went in through the arched door. 

In the quiet, peaceful nave amongst the columns were several worshipers in private contemplation, and after a moment, he located the red cape near the altar. For a moment, he just observed his prince gazing up at the cross, with the high, narrow windows all about him, and the candles flickering beyond. After a moment, the prince bowed his head.

Suddenly, Achilles remembered tying Hector to a pillar in the temple of Apollo. That was a fond memory. He smiled. Prince Hector had been furious. Prince Hermenegild would probably roll his eyes back and die of mortification. Happily, Achilles had outgrown the urge to shock him. Mostly. Smothering his smirk, Achilles came forward to join his beloved.

Hermenegild seemed to sense his approach, for he turned his head a bit, and then raised his eyes to him and let them linger on his warrior.

“How come only half of the candles are lit?” Achilles whispered.

“A worshipper lights one for a loved one who has died, or is ill. In remembrance, or to say a prayer,” his prince explained softly.

There was a collection box, so Achilles dropped a coin in it and lit a candle. Hermenegild watched him, puzzled. 

“Who is that for?”

“Your father. He’s going to die soon,” Achilles gloated.

He was rather surprised when his prince gave him a stricken look, and turned to walk quietly out of the church. Achilles watched him go and then turned and blew the candle back out again. _Die in the dark,_ he thought coldly toward the king who had ordered his son’s execution. Then he joined his prince.


	20. Flowers

They waited until they were out of town before speaking again. 

“How do you know he’s going to die? Have you … arranged something?” Hermenegild asked him uneasily.

“Not at all. But it’s going to happen soon. Less than a year.” Achilles predicted.

The prince rode on in silence, face bleak.

“I’d think you’d be relieved. Once he’s gone, you might be out of danger,” Achilles observed.

Silence.

“Have you forgotten what he did--” Achilles finally snapped.

“No!” The prince finally said. “But… I have also not forgotten what I did.”

“You regret moving against him?” The warrior was surprised.

They rode for a while, and Achilles waited for an answer, but by the struggle on his beloved’s face, it would be a long time coming. Eventually, they came to a curve in the road at high elevation, from which they could turn and observe the sea. It looked a deeper blue in the afternoon light.

Hermenegild gazed out at it, the breeze stirring his curls. Then he turned to Achilles.

“You say you are not here to destroy my faith. But your very existence is destroying it.”

Achilles felt the hurt seep into his gut. “Is that so?” He nodded, looking away. “You wish I did not exist.”

“NO! No, please, that is not what I meant,” his prince hastened to assure him.

Achilles swallowed, keeping his face stern. “What, then?”

His prince turned his head in frustration; a mannerism that had traveled through time with him to throw darts into his adoring protector. 

“I mean… I know you are from another world. That means… that there are other worlds! That means… there are other truths. Or if there is only one, spreading throughout the world like a note from the gong… it could not begin to spread until the gong was struck, and why did that take so long? And what about those who starved, waiting for that tone?” The words came out in a rush.

Achilles held the reins of his restless horse and stared at his prince. None of that had made any sense to him at all. He shook his head helplessly.

Hermenegild looked a bit pensive after that outburst. He turned to look about them, and then, after a moment, pointed up the hill. “There are your yellow flowers.”

Achilles glanced at them and back to him.

His beloved turned his horse and rode up to the flowers, and then dismounted and left the road. He walked into the field, running his hands over their tops. 

The warrior looked around a bit and other than a farmhouse nearby, saw no one. He dismounted as well and followed his prince. The horses dropped their heads to the grass. Hermenegild sat down in the midst of the yellow and lay back. Achilles joined him, puzzled.

“I’m ready to hear more about your world.” His Hector finally said, gazing at him with those deep eyes. “There’s no escaping it, so I must learn about it.”

Achilles gave him a look. That wasn’t a promising remark. “I don’t think you need to hear it.”

“But I insist, and you promised you would obey me in all things,” Hermenegild said with a little smile.

“I believe it was you who promised me,” Achilles reminded him softly.

“No, no, I remember it well, when I beat you down under the maple tree,” his Hector’s eyes were in full twinkle now, and fastened on him endearingly.

_He knows I adore him,_ Achilles mused. _He is completely aware._

Finally, he sighed and began. “Once, there was a prince, who was completely obedient to his father.”

“Unlike me,” Hermenegild said, growing somber.

“Oh, he didn’t believe in the gods like his father did, he merely obeyed.”

“Unlike me, again.”

“He had a younger brother who was a general favorite, and they lived in a city by the sea.”

Hermenegild swallowed and looked up at the sky and listened quietly now.

“One day on a diplomatic mission to a long time rival, the younger brother stole the rival’s wife, bringing a massive army down upon the city of the good prince. Now, the city had a wall—“

Hermenegild turned to study his face as he spoke, suddenly very alert.

“—but it also had a secret tunnel in. The younger brother went through the tunnel to gather yellow flowers to burn on the altar of his father’s favorite god, and the enemy soldiers saw him and followed him back in.”

“Was the city burned?” Hermenegild guessed.

Achilles nodded, watching him closely.

“What happened to the good prince?”

“He was rescued…” Achilles felt his eyes starting to sting again. It always seemed to happen when he least expected it. He took a breath and tried again. “He was rescued by an enemy general who had fallen in love with him.”

Hermenegild’s mouth fell open. “And they watched the city burn—“

“From a boat out at sea.”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a charged minute.

“How long ago was this?” His Hector whispered, his dark eyes shining.

“Long, long ago,” Achilles whispered back, and then leaned in to hover over those lips he loved.

His prince reached up and put his hand on the smooth blond hair, and urged him in that last little bit, and their kiss was slow, and deep, and tasted like tears.


	21. Love Making

When nightfall came, they dined and bathed, and lit the candles in Achilles’ room. They seemed to drift around each other with an odd peace, and spoke very little. When they were finally naked together, Hector lay on his back, and Achilles straddled him, looking down at him with gloating eyes. Then he reached with a smile for one of his clay pots of scented oil. 

Hector lay passive, gazing up at him trustingly. Achilles spread the oil lavishly on his prince, on his chest and belly, on his arms, and finally down onto his ready hardness, stroking it slowly. He found that he wanted to fondle his lover seemingly forever, and explore every secret inch over and over until his beloved was squirming. 

His prince lay in Achilles’ bed, eyes on the warrior as if he could not gaze enough. It was to be suspended in time, to lay spread and docile, and admire the smooth, golden skin shifting over the muscular form as his lover moved to lay down beside him. Achilles reclined on one arm and used the other to stroke his captive until he was beyond submission and well into subjugation. It was stunning to his prince to look down at his own straining cock and see the hands that could heal or kill so easily now engaged in handling it with masterful expertise. He watched that golden hand wrap around the base and squeeze until a sweet ache shot through him and he gasped. Then he looked up at the blue eyes that smiled down on him as the stroking began again, so slowly.

Achilles teased his Hector, drawing it out, moving slowly, stopping, starting again. Hector absorbed it all with lambent passivity.

“I don’t want to come yet,” he whispered, eyes pleading. “Tell me … tell me another story,” he managed, blinking in concentration. The fingers that teased him ran down over his balls and cupped them, squeezing gently.

Achilles grinned, eyes tracing the lines of his Hector’s face. He reached for the oil and smoothed some on his own cock, and then rolled over on top of his prince and lined their hard lengths up against each other.

“There once was a prince who was held captive by an enemy general who was madly in love with him,” he said quietly in his Hector’s ear, lips barely touching it. He ground his hips down, rubbing their sensitive flesh together in slow, sure undulations.

Taking his Hector’s wrists in his hands, he pinned them to the bed and whispered, “and he would hold him down just like this.”

Hector’s eyes closed and his lips parted as he breathed, listening to every word tickling his ear. There was no sound in the room for long moments except their breathing.

“Sometimes,” Achilles drew their arms up to the headboard and held them there firmly, “He tied his prince up like this. And I’m going to get some rope very soon, and show you exactly how he did it.”

Now his Hector was moving his hips pleadingly up against his captor, who brought his full weight to bear in holding him down and pushing back. He stopped for a moment, making his trapped lover arch his back restlessly.

“Oh, he tied those wrists up tight, too,” Achilles paused to suckle the pink earlobe, and squeezed his prince’s wrists and thrust harder, trapping their cocks between them and grinding, sliding his flesh roughly against his lover. Hector lay beneath him utterly lost to himself.

Achilles released one wrist and brought his hand under Hector’s head, digging his fingers into the curls and taking a large handful carefully. He knew exactly what felt good to his love, and pulled slowly but firmly until that long throat was a bared column for his mouth.

“He was a brute to his prince, and held him down by the hair and teased him, and rode him, and wouldn’t let him move at all.” Achilles curled his hips against his captive harder and faster. 

Hector’s mouth fell open; he was so near.

“He made him squirm, sometimes for hours—“ Achilles breathed, and smiled, and then sank his teeth carefully into that neck. Then he bit down, and slammed his hips against his prince, who convulsed, writhing helplessly in his grip, and came with a strained exhalation that sounded like agony. He pumped his own hips a few more times and joined his lover in a soundless grimace of completion, his hands moving to gather him up and hold them tightly together.

It was long moments before they could do anything but clutch each other, and hold one another through the residual shudders and last convulsive squirms. Achilles kissed that beautiful neck over and over, mindlessly.

Eventually, their muscles loosened, and their flesh softened, and they lay fused together in limp satisfaction, arms still wrapped around one another. 

Achilles lay full on his lover, marveling at the experience. Never had he waited so long to love his Hector, and never had his Hector given of himself so willingly. Even now, when he finally lifted up slightly to peruse his prince’s face, the way those dark eyes gazed back seemed to invite him all the way in, all the way down to the center of him.

“Stay on top of me,” his Hector breathed. “Don’t ever let me go free. I don’t want to be free of you.”

Achilles sank back down on him in utter bliss, burying his face in that neck. “You won’t ever be,” he said, and it was both a promise and a warning.


	22. Visitor

It was late afternoon one day in spring when Simon was interrupted in his duties by a visitor. The man who appeared at the door looked like a sea captain. His hair was lank and long, and his face was a bit weathered, but not unattractive. It was the sort of face that was meant to be hard, with pale eyes and a strong jaw. He held a package in his hand. Not a large one.

Simon was rather suspicious of him. His lordships did not have visitors, ever, and there had always been a bit of an air of secrecy about their residence there. He wasn’t sure he should let the fellow in, or even acknowledge that he did indeed have the right villa. All the man did was hold the package and say in a rather foreign-accented Latin, “I come to see Achilles. I come to see Achilles!”

Finally, the servant bade the man to wait in the entrance hall, near the now-battered looking gong, and pattered with slapping sandals to the library, where Achilles was tying strings to the darts he’d embedded in the map and stretching them across in perfectly parallel lines to affix their ends to the opposite wall.

Simon paused to stare in consternation at this strange desire to turn the library into a huge harp.

“Sir. Stranger come package say Achilles.”

“Tailor?”

“No.”

“Library?”

“Look like sailor. Skin rough. Say Achilles. Package!”

“Here,” Achilles scooped up a pebble from the bowl on his desk, squeezed it, and handed it over. “Give gold, take package. Where Hector?”

“Horses. Green.”

Simon left. Achilles stepped back to make sure the strings were perfectly parallel. Then he looked at the bit of parchment on which he’d penned his calculations. He reached for the lump of clay in the wooden bowl near the pebbles and pinched off a bit, rolling it between his fingers.

Simon returned.

“Stranger no leave.” He said flatly. He wasn’t happy. He was trying to bake bread and his oldest son had gotten married and left service to farm. He and the younger son were keeping up the house for his Lordships by themselves, and now some damn stranger was interrupting him while the bread was rising.

Achilles was irritated too. He’d finally come to the conclusion that he couldn’t see the pattern looking at time and place separately. He’d have to find a way to see them together. 

He turned, handed a letter opener to Simon and said, “Here. Kill stranger. Finish bread.”

“Sir!”

“Fine,” Achilles tossed the letter opener back and left the library to go see to this.

In the entry stood a man with long, dark blond hair and narrow, intelligent pale eyes. His nose and jaw were clearly cut, his face weathered, his body strong and casually dressed.

Achilles looked at him and stopped in his tracks, features softening in recognition. His lips parted, but he did not speak.

The stranger turned to him and spoke in Greek, although even Greek seemed to have changed a bit over the years. The accent was odd, but he was perfectly understandable. “You must be Achilles. By God, you look like your mother!”

Achilles was frozen, staring.

“Same eyes.” The fellow nodded. “She showed me in the ball but it’s not the same. It’s kind of cloudy sometimes.”

Achilles put his hand over his mouth and just turned his back for a moment.

“You alright? Oh, I remind you of someone, don’t I? Your mother said the same thing, first time I landed on her shore. She said I looked just like… oh, who was it...”

Achilles turned back to him, hand still hovering near his mouth. “What’s your name now?”

The fellow lifted his eyebrows in amusement. “Now? Luke.”

Achilles swallowed. “Luke. How about a drink?”

Luke sighed. “I thought you would never ask. But first, your mother said to give you this, and she said only you can drink it, it’s poison for anyone else.”

Achilles took the package he offered and gave the gong a tap. Simon came, exasperated. “Wine. Yes. Wait.” 

Achilles led Luke into the dining room and put the package on the table. They settled in—and Simon’s son was quick with the wine.

“Brusque, but efficient,” Luke commented, and Achilles smirked.

“They don’t want me pounding on the gong anymore.”

“Yeah, it looks like it’s had a beating. So. Your mother put a letter in there, but she said you never read directions so I’d better say it again: don’t try to give that tonic, or whatever it is, to anyone else. It’s only for you. You’re the only one who can drink it. “

Achilles’ eyes kept searching the other fellow’s face for signs of recognition, but they were not there. Sadly, he accepted it and applied himself to listening.

“How did you know where to find me?” He asked.

“Oh, your mother has a—“ he put down the chalice and held his hands as if holding a ball. “—thing. Still, I had to hunt a bit. Took me a few days once I landed.”

“How do you know my mother?” Achilles asked.

Luke smiled modestly and ran his hand over his hair. “Oh, we’re … we’ve been friends a while now. She’s… she’s a fine woman.” He nodded awkwardly. “Remarkable woman.”

“I see,” Achilles said drily.

Luke shrugged, still smiling. He did have good teeth. “Oh. She also said, _No, not Jesus, and not Alexander,_ and that it was in the desert and her father couldn’t get you there and it was just the once.”

Achilles sat straighter. “Did she say when?”

“Uhm… oh Lord, let me think… she said the time is right but the… it was just the location. Something about the location. And nothing anyone can do about it now, so… let it go.”

The warrior mused that if he’d had any doubt this messenger was truly from his mother, that would have banished it.

“More wine? Here. So how did you get here?”

“I sailed, of course—and it was the smoothest, fastest voyage I ever took across the sea. I mean, I have traveled, let me tell you.” Luke took a good swig. “Usually, Gades to Larissa is… oh, three weeks if nothing goes wrong. But this was like a shot.”

Achilles took another drink himself. “I’m glad to see you,” he admitted, and blinked rapidly. He was getting terribly sentimental in his old age. And by now, he estimated… well, anyway. “I’m glad my mother knows you.”

From behind him, Hector entered from the green, and paused, startled. They never had guests. He turned to Simon’s son, who had entered with him, and asked him to prepare his bath in a low voice. Then he turned to inspect the stranger at his table.

“Hello,” he said, coming forward again.

Achilles stood and said in Latin, “This is… this is Luke. He came from Greece with a package from my mother. He—“ he turned, “—do you have a place to stay?”

Luke scrubbed his chin with his hand. “Well, we’re pulling out this evening. It’s a little unstable here right now.”

“Why is it unstable?” Hector asked, sinking down to sit with them.

“Hadn’t you heard?” Luke asked. “It’s all over the port. The news came in this morning. King Leovigild died last night.”

Hector inhaled slowly, leaning forward on his elbows, and bringing one hand up to rest his forehead on it.

Achilles blinked, and then looked at him. “I told you it would be less than a year,” he said.


	23. Library

The three of them stood in the library, gazing up at the strings Achilles had pulled across the room.

“Well, you’ll have to take these two down,” Luke commented, touching them gently.

“Why?” Hector asked, eyes tracing the strings.

“My mother said Not Jesus and Not Alexander. And I’ll have to replace them with the one from the desert. Did she say where in the desert? Because that’s… large,” Achilles commented unhappily.

Luke pointed to a spot and said, “She said middle of nowhere. That right there looks like the middle of nowhere to me.”

Achilles moved the darts, and discarded one. Then he reaffixed the string. They admired it for bit.

“So what’s the clay for?” Hector asked.

“I want to see time and place at the same time, so,” Achilles started with the string stretching forth from Troy and pressed a small ball of clay onto it. “Now, going forward… one hand’s length is about 500 years—“

“Why?” Luke asked.

“Because I don’t want to run out of string,” Achilles muttered.

“So here on the desert strand is the one you never met,” Luke said.

“And who never met you.” Hector added quietly, watching his lover stick a ball of clay on the string.

“Then here, closer, is Edessa…” Achilles stuck a wad of clay on that as well.

When it was done, they stood back and looked at the balls of clay floating out from the map.

“Anyone see a pattern?” Achilles asked.

“Time is shorter each turn.” Said Hector.

“More people. Your mother said it’s because there’s more people all the time. Eventually it could get to where the turn-around is instant.”

“Not necessarily. You only have five points of contact. The pattern could be far bigger than this. More complex,” Hector said.

Achilles moved to stand closer to the strings and look at it from a different angle. “These three are in a perfect line…”

“If you stand there. Move over here, and…” Luke leaned over.

Hector finally turned away. “I don’t think you are going to be able to predict anything,” he said. “You spend so much time in here, trying to see the future. You’ll lose the present.”

Achilles looked at his prince’s hair. There was one silver hair in it. He’d spotted it a week ago and his heart rate sped up immediately. But still, just one. “We have time.”

“You don’t know that,” Hector said soberly. “Why did your mother send you that tonic? Why now?”

Achilles’ eyes widened, and he spun to Luke. “Did she say anything? Does she know something??”

Luke lifted both hands. “No, no, I don’t think so. She just… well, she saw what happened to… was it Victor? And she said, just because you arrive doesn’t mean… you know.”

They both looked at him, waiting. 

“You know. Life is… unpredictable. We aren’t guaranteed anything. Patterns shift.”

“This pattern has held pretty steady,” Achilles disagreed.

“There was no fire,” Hector said.

Achilles fell silent again. 

“You never know what’s going to happen, is all,” Luke said awkwardly. “That’s just how life is.”

Achilles lowered his head, eyes widening. Then he lifted his head again. “Are you going back to my mother’s island when you leave here?”

Luke nodded awkwardly. “Well, yes.”

Achilles turned to Hector. “Pack.”

Hector wavered. “What?”

“Pack. Pack now. We’re leaving.”

Hector hesitated. “I… I don’t want to leave here.”

Achilles looked a bit wild-eyed. “Do you understand what it means, it means you could… something could happen to you at any time!”

Hector smiled. “I’ve always known that.”

Achilles stared at him, pleadingly.

Hector shook his head. “I think we have to let destiny take its course. Perhaps progress is being made. Perhaps something is unfolding that we are working our way through, and we just have to work our way through it.”

Achilles smoldered silently.

“In fact,” Hector stepped past him and took the strings in his hands, and with a tug, pulled them from the wall, and then pulled the darts out of the map one by one.

His warrior watched in disbelief as all his calculations and measurements were undone.

“I’m tired of you spending all your time in here,” Hector said gently, and looked him in the eye. “I think you need to stop.”

Luke, watching this drama, downed the last of the wine, and set the chalice down. “Look,” he said, putting his hand gently on Achilles’ shoulder. “I come through these parts pretty regularly. Four, five times a year. I’ll check on you. Maybe the time will come when you both do want to leave here, and if you do—“ he spread his hands. “Here I am. But for the moment, I think your Hector is right. You have a nice life here. You have horses, and a city to explore, and… a gong.”

Hector smiled discreetly.

“I’m going back to my ship. The streets down around the market are a little wild, but you two are pretty well-situated up here in the hills. Why don’t you read your mother’s letter, and calm down. I’ll see you in a few months. Meanwhile, just … live your lives. Right?”

Luke gave Achilles’ shoulder another friendly slap, and shook Hector’s hand. Then he let himself out of the library and saw himself to the door. 

Simon stepped out of the kitchen and regarded him suspiciously. 

“I’m going, I’m going,” He smiled. “But I’ll be back one day.” 

The door closed behind him, and Simon went to the library to see if his Lordships wanted any more wine.

“No,” Hector said, and handed him a bundle of string and clay. “But will you get rid of this and tidy up a bit in here, when you get a chance?” He left the library.

Achilles looked around at the library and then followed his love out, down the colonnade and into the bedroom suite.

“How would you like it if I went into your chapel and started pulling things down?” He asked, slamming the door behind him. It took him a moment to register that Hector was taking his clothes off and stepping into the tub.

“I know exactly what you want to do in that chapel,” Hector murmured, sinking down into the water and leaning back to gaze at him with a little smile.

Achilles sat down on the bed and took his sandals off, watching his lover soap himself slowly. The smooth, muscular planes of his body were pale in the twilight of the room. He came off the bed and went to his knees by the tub. “Let me,” he commanded. He cleaned his prince very thoroughly, whispering directions, which were obeyed immediately.

When Hector was ready, Achilles led him to the bed, dried him with the towel, and then pushed him face down onto the bed. He shucked his clothing and straddled his prince’s hips.

“Oil,” he commanded, and Hector reached a long arm over and handed it back to him.

The room was quiet, and growing darker. But Hector’s pale skin fairly glowed, and Achilles rubbed him with oil from his neck to his feet… he always paid special attention to those beautiful feet. When he came back to his beloved’s hips, he was ready himself. He slicked his cock, and then slid his fingers between those white buttocks and started stroking.

“Once, there was a monk who was captured by an angel,” he began, smiling slightly. Then he fell silent for a moment while he inserted his fingers and worked them back and forth, deeper each time. He watched his own preparations, enjoying the sight of his hand invading between the smooth, round muscles.

Hector closed his eyes and stretched out further. Achilles mounted him and penetrated him very slowly, watching his face, watching his lips part.

“He had scars all over his back,” He whispered, and pinched a spot tightly. Hector winced and inhaled deeply. “One was here.” He pushed his cock in deeper, and brought his fingers up to another spot on his prince’s shoulder. “One was here,” he pinched it hard. Hector tipped his head back and pushed his hips up. Achilles bore down hard and pushed the curly dark head back down onto the pillow. “One was here.” Hector hissed slightly under the hard fingers.

Then he hooked his arms around his lover’s arms, and pulled them back tightly. “Sometimes the angel held him just like this, and spread his legs,” he inserted thighs between his prince’s and forced them apart.

Hector writhed luxuriously. Achilles pulled his arms back tighter and bore into him, feeling the tight heat caressing his engorged flesh. He mouthed his captive’s ear and neck, feasting on the warm skin.

“He’d hold the poor monk down, and fuck him like a slave,” Achilles breathed into Hector’s curls, thrusting harder. He could feel his lover’s heat, and the slight, pleading twists of his hips.

Finally, he couldn’t speak anymore and buried himself in his lover, pounding into his pliant body. He released one arm and Hector drew his leg up. Achilles’ hand dove down into the hollow and grasped his prince’s leaking cock and stroked it, plunging as deep as he could until the sensations sharpened, and gathered, and he poured himself into his beloved. He felt Hector twist and buck under him, and heard him finally groan as if in pain, and he held his lover through his ecstasy, and the shudders after.

In the silence of their recovery, Achilles released his captive's other arm and brought his hand up to lazily rub the shoulder muscles. With his other hand stroked his prince’s ribs rather roughly. Touching Hector was like a drug, and the more naked flesh he had access to, the more he wanted to stroke, and knead, and squeeze. He pushed his nose into the strong, sloping neck and rubbed his face on the damp skin.

Hector shifted under him. “It feels like you’re marking your territory,” he said quietly.

Achilles continued his tender mauling of his captive, running his hands over his Hector, inhaling his scent, laying on him with his full weight, burrowing his face in deeper. 

“I am,” he said.


End file.
